AI slop, n.Trivia

Programmer ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠Simon Willison pushed "slop" into mainstream tech vocabulary in a May 2024 blog post, calling it the AI-era equivalent of spam.

Merriam-Webster ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠made "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year; the word meant soft mud in the 1700s and food waste in the 1800s before meaning AI junk.

A ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠North Carolina man was charged with wire fraud for using hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and bot listeners to collect over $10 million in streaming royalties.