In certain years, predicting the Merriam-Webster word of the year is effortless, and 2025 turned out to be one of those years.

In a decision that caught no one off guard, the prestigious dictionary publisher selected “slop” as its word of the year for 2025. Merriam-Webster defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is typically produced in bulk through artificial intelligence,” aptly characterizing the state of the internet over the last year.

The internet saw an explosion of slop in 2025, reminiscent of a slop eruption. Across social media, music streaming platforms, video sites, group messaging, The White House X feed, and our email accounts, AI slop was everywhere.

Although slop might have been an expected selection for Merriam-Webster, it was undeniably precise. This year witnessed a surge of AI-generated absurdity and deepfakes online. Short-form video feeds are currently cluttered with charming yet potentially fake animal videos, and Facebook is overflowing with strange AI-created images of dismembered soldiers holding messages that read “no one likes me.” I’ve encountered a lot of it myself.

What made 2025 the year of slop?

Leading tech firms have tirelessly worked to inundate the internet with AI-generated content. For the first time, AI video models such as Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora 2 allowed for the near-instantaneous generation of realistic videos. While a trained observer can frequently spot AI-produced videos, recognizing genuine viral videos is becoming ever more challenging.

Meta even introduced a short-form video application explicitly for AI-created clips, and it wasn’t the only tech titan to unleash an endless slop generator in 2025. Although generative AI has existed for several years, 2025 felt like the watershed moment when corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Meta integrated it as a vital aspect of their business strategies.

People are even contemplating adding anti-deepfake provisions to their wills now. In