AI Slop is Macquarie’s Word of the Year 2025. I welcome the choice – but I was bored by the shortlist

AI slop is Macquarie Dictionary’s 2025 word of the year. It also won the popular vote. The dictionary defines the word as “low-quality content created by generative AI (artificial intelligence), often containing errors and not requested by the user.”

I’ve spent the last year researching worried, duplicitous, and ubiquitous generative AI – and drowning in AI bullshit. That’s why I welcome the choice.

This year began in January with Arwa Mahdawi’s column in the Guardian, in which she warned that the internet was “rapidly being overtaken by AI nonsense” – and shared bizarre examples on Facebook: AI-generated images of Jesus made from shrimp.

But AI slop isn’t all fun, games and eye-rolling.

An AI journalist for the business magazine Forbes wrote in September that dirty AI jobs are replacing once valued professions. And a social media entrepreneur who turned to the “side hustle” of creating AI content after being fired by an internet company says it’s…