Glossary · noun
Slop
Slop is content produced in bulk with little care or effort, and published for volume rather than for a reader. In its current internet sense it usually means AI-generated material pushed at people who did not ask for it.
In plain English
The word has two lives. It has meant soft mud since the 1700s and food waste for animals since the 1800s, which is where the dismissive tone comes from: slop is what gets poured into a trough. The modern internet sense keeps that tone and changes the subject.
What makes something slop
The three qualities people keep coming back to are low effort, high volume, and indifference to the reader. A page written to hold a search ranking, an image generated in seconds to farm reactions, a reply posted by a bot account: the common thread is that nobody invested care and nobody expects you to get anything out of it.
Slop versus spam
The two words are cousins with different targets. Spam names unwanted bulk email, and it spread because the medium was cheap. Slop names unwanted bulk content across text, images, audio and video. Simon Willison's 2024 argument for the word rested on exactly this parallel: plenty of promotional email is legitimate and plenty of machine output is fine, while material generated mindlessly and thrust upon someone who did not ask for it is exactly what the word names.
One difference matters in practice. Spam is mostly trying to sell you something. Slop is often trying to reach an algorithm, with the money arriving later through reach, advertising or a funnel.
Origin and history
Old English usage: soft mud in the 1700s, then food waste and anything of little value in the 1800s. Merriam-Webster notes that the older senses connoted a product of little value or food waste fed to animals.
Internet usage: the term attached itself to machine-generated material in the early 2020s, and commentary on the word traces early use to the release of AI image generators in 2022, circulating as slang in communities on 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube.
It was formalized in May 2024 by the writer deepfates, who observed that the word was becoming the standard name for unwanted AI-generated content, and by Simon Willison, who wrote that slop was the ideal label for the practice of sharing unreviewed machine output with strangers.
In December 2025, Merriam-Webster selected “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year, defining it as digital content of low quality produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. The American Dialect Society chose the same word for the same year.
Examples
- A social feed post generated purely to collect reactions.
- A listicle published to hold a keyword rather than to help anyone decide anything.
- A recipe, foraging guide or medical explainer written by a model and sold without review.
- A work report that arrives finished-looking and takes longer to check than to write.
Also known as
- slop content
- AI slop
Sources
Every factual claim on this page is traceable to one of these. Where a number or quotation comes from a single source, it is attributed in the sentence that uses it.
- 2025 Word of the Year: Slop Merriam-Webster
- Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year is “slop” AP News
- AI slop Wikipedia
- Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content Simon Willison, 8 May 2024
- AI slop Cambridge Dictionary
Frequently asked questions
What does slop mean in slang?
Content produced carelessly and in bulk, especially AI-generated material. Merriam-Webster defines it as digital content of low quality produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.
Did slop mean something before AI?
Yes. It meant soft mud in the 1700s, then food waste fed to animals, then anything of little value. The dismissive tone of the modern usage comes directly from those older senses.
Is slop an insult?
It carries a judgment, which is the point of the word. Calling something slop says it was made without care and published anyway. It is not a neutral category like AI-generated content.
What is the difference between slop and spam?
Spam is unwanted bulk email. Slop is unwanted bulk content of any kind, and it usually aims at a recommendation algorithm rather than at a person's inbox.