slop

/slop/

noun

Meaning

Low-effort, mass-produced digital content that offers little value and is often made or distributed primarily to capture attention, generate engagement or earn money. The term is especially associated with unreviewed AI-generated text, images and videos, but it can also describe repetitive human-made material that feels cheap, generic or disposable.[4]

1. AI-generated text, images, audio or video that is produced rapidly in large quantities and published with little checking, editing or creative purpose.
2. Any repetitive, low-value online material made mainly to fill feeds, attract clicks, exploit algorithms or support advertising revenue, whether or not AI was used.
3. A dismissive label for content that looks polished enough to circulate but is generic, inaccurate, emotionally manipulative or devoid of meaningful human attention.

Examples

“My feed is 90% AI slop now.”

“That travel guide is pure slop—half the places don't exist.”

“The comments are filling up with slop made for engagement.”

“I skipped the video after three seconds of robotic narration and stock-image slop.”

Origin and spread

The modern digital sense extends the older word slop, associated with waste, swill and products of little value, to unwanted online material. The term was circulating in online and technology communities before it reached wider attention; the earliest securely documented example in the retrieved record is a May 7, 2024 post proposing slop for unwanted AI-generated content, followed by programmer Simon Willison's May 8, 2024 explanation of the term. Mainstream coverage soon used it for mass-produced AI text, images and other media. The exact point of origin is uncertain, and the older meanings of slop are not evidence that the modern slang sense existed at the same time.[2]

How to use it

Slop is informal, strongly negative and often deliberately mocking. It usually criticizes the way content was made or distributed—not simply the fact that AI was involved—so an edited, useful AI-assisted work is not automatically slop. The word can also be used more broadly for human-made clickbait, filler or algorithmic content, but calling someone's work slop dismisses its quality and effort.

Sources

1. Simon Willison — Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated contentSupports: earliest documented use, form.
2. The Guardian — Spam, junk … slop? The latest wave of AI behind the ‘zombie internet’Supports: origin.
3. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism — AI-generated slop is quietly conquering the internet
4. The Atlantic — The Slop CandidateSupports: meaning.
5. Kommers et al. — Measuring AI “Slop” in Text