‘Slop’ crowned Merriam-Webster word of the year, defining era of AI-generated content

Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year, defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," and tracing the term’s evolution from 18th-century "soft mud" to modern-day rubbish. The dictionary highlighted a 2025 "flood of slop" — absurd videos, off-kilter ads, fake-but-plausible news, junk AI-written books and other low-value outputs that people both complained about and consumed — and listed runners-up including "gerrymander," "touch grass," "performative" and "tariff," while noting other lexicons chose AI-tinged terms as well.

Analysis

Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year and explicitly defined it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," citing a 2025 "flood of slop" that included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, fake-but-plausible news, junk AI-written books, workplace "workslop" and viral gimmicks like talking cats. The entry traces the term's lexical evolution and lists runners-up such as "gerrymander," "touch grass," "performative" and "tariff," while noting other lexicons (Oxford and Dictionary.com) have also highlighted AI-tinged terms this year. The theme classification (Artificial Intelligence; Technology & Innovation; Media & Entertainment) and a neutral sentiment score with a low market impact score (0.05) indicate cultural and industry recognition of the problem but minimal immediate market reaction. This recognition signals persistent structural pressure on digital content ecosystems: potential degradation of ad inventory quality, higher moderation and verification costs, reputational risk for platforms and publishers, and a commercial opportunity for provenance, detection and higher-quality human-created content providers. Investors should therefore monitor engagement-quality metrics, ad CPMs, moderation spend, adoption of AI-detection tools and regulatory signals as early indicators of revenue and margin pressure or upside for remediation vendors.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Re-evaluate exposure to ad-dependent digital platforms and publishers by monitoring user-engagement quality metrics and ad CPMs, reduce position size if engagement and monetization metrics deteriorate materially
• Prioritize due diligence on vendors of content-moderation, AI-detection and provenance/verification tools as potential beneficiaries of elevated demand, consider selective exposure to firms with clear revenue models tied to content quality controls
• Closely track regulatory developments and content-policy enforcement and preserve liquidity or reduce leverage in media/tech positions until moderation-cost trends and policy risks become clearer