This Week's Term: AI Slop - digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.
Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year - a signal of how widespread frustration with low-quality AI content has become. The term evokes exactly what it should: something sloppy, carelessly produced, and unwanted.
Mentions of "AI slop" across the internet increased ninefold from 2024 to 2025. AI-generated articles now make up more than half of all English-language content on the web, according to SEO firm Graphite. A recent study found that 21% of recommendations served to new YouTube users were AI-generated slop, with an additional 33% classified as "brainrot" - nonsensical repetitive content designed to trigger engagement.
You've surely seen it: bizarre AI images flooding Facebook feeds, clickbait articles that say nothing, product descriptions that make no sense, videos clearly generated to harvest views rather than provide value, and sloppy podcasts created with NotebookLM.
For leaders, AI slop represents the opposite of the Ownership principle we discussed earlier. Slop is short-term thinking made visible - content created to game algorithms rather than serve customers, prioritizing quantity over quality, speed over substance.
Platforms are responding. Pinterest introduced controls letting users limit AI content in their feeds. YouTube is adjusting algorithms to deprioritize synthetic content. But the fundamental tension remains: AI makes content creation so cheap that the incentive to produce volume over value is powerful.
Merriam-Webster's announcement captured something important: "In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that's less fearful, more mocking. The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don't seem too superintelligent."
The word itself is defiant. People are tired of synthetic content that wastes their time. They want things that are real, genuine, and made with care.
For business leaders, this creates both risk and opportunity. The risk is that your AI-generated content gets lumped in with slop, eroding trust. The opportunity is that in a world flooded with low-quality AI content, genuinely valuable content stands out more than ever.
I hope that your regard this newsletter as one such example and not as slop...