Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2025 was "slop," the catch-all term for machine-generated crapola—or, as Merriam-Webster more prosaically (and politely) defines it, "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." Hard to argue with the pick: As PC Gamer's Lincoln Carpenter said, it was "a year full of AI humiliation" that started with a stupid AI-generated Star Wars video and didn't stop until the calendar ran out.
But while "slop" is without doubt an appropriately defining word for 2025, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says it's time to stop talking about it, because we need to move on to bigger and more important things—like how they're going to make this obscenely expensive and resource-sucking mistake generator that nobody wants actually work.
