At the big American dictionary, the Merriam-Webster, the team has announced their word of the year for 20225—it is ’slop.’
They say this word ‘slop’ now refers to low-quality digital content, often produced in large quantities by AI (artificial intelligence), encompassing absurd videos, fake news, and junky AI-written books.
Merriam-Webster's president, Greg Barlow, highlighted that the word illustrates public fascination, annoyance, and concern regarding AI-generated material.
Other significant words considered on the short list for 2025 included ‘6-7’, ‘performative’, ‘gerrymander’, ‘touch grass’, ‘conclave’, and ‘tariffs.
That short list mostly makes sense.
‘6-7’ was the Word of the Year choice by Dictionary.com—and I’ve explained it more than once in these columns and on both radio and television.
The word ‘gerrymander’ also makes sense since there has been a battle over what they call ‘re-districting’ in America (meaning, redrawing electoral boundaries)—with the accusation being made is that’s what’s going on is ‘gerrymandering’ (again a word I have explained several times in the past).
As for ‘tariff’—that is clearly a Trump word and much in the news.
Of course, for we Aussies we know that our own Macquarie Dictionary got in first and picked ‘AI slop’ as its Word of the Year, while the Merriam-Webster team have settled on the shorter version (just ‘slop’ on its own), but it’s still the case that they weren’t first!
However, I should note that when two major dictionaries choose words that record the uselessness of AI then we all need to stop treating AI as anything serious.
It’s just super-fast computing based on huge language data bases.
It’s not only not intelligent, it’s not very smart!
And we all have to stop taking AI seriously.
Tonight, I will join Peta Credlin for 'Words Matter' on Sky News (for the last time this year, Peta is about to go on holidays--so don't miss tonight).
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