Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year to capture the surge of low-quality digital material produced in quantity by artificial intelligence that has flooded social feeds and news cycles.Greg Barlow said the spike in searches reflects public annoyance and a renewed appetite for authenticity, and editors listed examples from AI-generated videos to distorted advertising, realistic-looking fake news and junky AI-written books while noting concerns about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright infringement.Oxford University Press chose "rage bait" after combining data with a public vote of more than 30,000 people, underscoring a broader debate about online content, regulation and digital wellbeing as audiences push back against formulaic, attention-grabbing material.