Macquarie Dictionary, considered the standard reference on Australian English, has announced that 'AI slop' has been chosen by its committee and voted by the public as the Word of the Year for 2025.
From “Shrimp-Jesus” to Mark Zuckerberg wood carvings and even Donald Trump’s crass content spewing, “AI slop” has permeated every corner of the internet in 2025, and we’re more zombified as a result.
The term has been named Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2025, and it is defined as “low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user”.
Generic, soulless and mind-numbingly ubiquitous, “AI slop” is ‘advanced’ internet spam and seems to be the perfect choice for 2025’s Word of the Year – as evidenced by it winning the people’s choice vote on top of the decision made by the committee of word experts.
“We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop – AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use,” the committee said in a statement announcing its decision.
“While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come.”
The committee added: “The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?”
“AI slop” is also an appropriate pick considering it reflects widespread anxieties about the flood of meaningless, low-quality AI-generated content and how we evaluate information online.
Macquarie’s choice joins other 2025 Words of the Year which collectively reflect wider concerns regarding the reach of AI, the way it regurgitates copyrighted material and threatens cognitive capacities, as well as the potentially damaging influence of social media.
Dictionary.com chose the viral TikTok slang “6-7” (read our explainer on the meaningless phenomenon here); Collins Dictionary crowned “vibe coding” (“making an app or website by describing it to (AI) rather than by writing programming code manually”); and last week, Cambridge Dictionary elected “parasocial” as its Word of the Year, highlighting the hollow, one-sided and “unhealthy” connections people feel between themselves and a celebrity, fictional character or an AI chatbot.
Macquarie’s “AI slop” was up against a shortlist of words and terms including:
- Ate (and left no crumbs): An expression used to indicate that someone has performed or executed.
- Attention economy: an economy in which human attention is treated as a major commodity, especially in advertising, in which the aim is to maximise the time a customer spends viewing a product.
- Bathroom camping: Isolating oneself in a bathroom or bathroom cubicle for a period of time, to seek solitude, avoid work, regulate emotions after overstimulation, anxiety or stress.
- Bind box: A type of mystery box which contains an unseen collectible toy or figurine, the buyer being encouraged to purchase multiple boxes in order to complete a full set.
- Clanker: Derogatory term for a robot or other entity which operates using artificial intelligence to carry out a specific task which would normally be performed by a human.
- Medical misogyny: Entrenched prejudice against women in the context of medical treatment and knowledge, especially in the area of reproductive health, as by medical professionals minimising or dismissing reports of symptoms, lack of research into gynaecological conditions, etc.
- Ozempic face: Condition resulting from the use of a semaglutide drug, characterised by wrinkling and sagging of the face after rapid weight loss.
- Roman Empire: Term for various events, interests or subjects, that one finds themselves frequently thinking about - from a trend on TikTok in which men were asked how often they thought about the Roman Empire.
- Six-seven: That nonsense expression again, one which has no meaning, often accompanied by a gesture in which each hand is held out to the side with palms facing up, alternately moving each up and down as if comparing weights.
From the look of the shortlist, things are getting sloppier and prove that Macquarie’s 2024 Word of the Year was also spot-on: the gradual “enshittification” of the internet continues. And while Shrimp Jesus may be everywhere, a tangible AI-regulating miracle is desperately needed right now. That, or a collective "Stop - we're better than this." Surely?
