Merriam-Webster chose "slop" as its 2025 Word of the Year, defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," and saying the selection reflects a surge in searches that expresses public annoyance and a hunger for authenticity.Greg Barlow at Merriam-Webster noted that editors combined search data with editorial judgment and added more than 5,000 new entries to capture rapidly changing usage, while the editors warned that AI tools such as Sora enable lifelike deepfakes and that manipulated images like the one posted by Pete Hegseth have intensified debate over misinformation and misuse.Oxford chose "rage bait" after a public vote of more than 30,000 people and the two publishers different approaches highlighted a wider cultural conversation about algorithmic content, platform responses from TikTok, Pinterest, Spotify and Google, and the demand for genuine, human-made work.