AI has made it trivially easy to produce content, and the result is a flood of generic, shallow material that exists to fill space rather than help anyone. People have started calling this "AI slop," and the term captures something real. Recycled tutorials, SEO-bait blog posts, content that says nothing you couldn't get by asking a chatbot directly. There's a lot of it, and it's getting worse.
AI slop is here, it's ubiquitous, it's being used by the US president, Donald Trump, and now, it's the word of the year. The Macquarie Dictionary dubbed the term the epitome of 2025 linguistics, with a committee of word experts saying the outcome embodies the word of the year's general theme of reflecting a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year.
AI is fantastic! The possibilities are limitless! A true revolution! And its biggest achievement might be to push digital back to being an addition to our lives, instead of the very centre of them. Wait, what?! No! YES, but don't panic. Ads have always been there and always will be. This is not a declaration of the end of anything.
Cat videos, selfies and dad jokes are typical fare for any social media feed but Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is introducing a new twist: they're all made by artificial intelligence. The Meta founder and chief executive has announced the launch of Vibes, a new feed on the Meta AI app comprised entirely of AI-made videos. The arrival of powerful video models has led to further commentary on the wave of AI slop a term for mass-produced, often bizarre content that clutters up feeds