Dictionary aficionado Merriam-Webster has unveiled the 2025 Word of the Year – and it has both nothing to do with photography, and everything to do with photography: Slop.
Merriam-Webster defines slop this way: “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
Slop is AI content, not photography, yet the term earning top honors for the year is enough to make anyone in any creative field grin. See, Merrim-Webster’s Word of the Year (and its runner-ups, such as “touch grass,” “tariff” and the cringe-worthy “6 7”) are based on spikes in search data and the word is often representative of the year’s current events.
Choosing a word that mocks AI as word of the year is a win for human creators in all art types, including photography. Yes, creators all year have been bemoaning generative AI. But, a word that, as the dictionary company puts it, “has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch” becoming so widely used to describe the technology, feels indicative of the general public’s views on AI, not just creatives.
I keep coming back to a meme that I saw months back that referred to writing, but could just as aptly be used for photography. It said something along the lines of this: “If no one can be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?” If a photographer can’t be bothered to take the photo, why should anyone be bothered to look at the photo?
As Merriam-Webster puts it, “The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”
I’m counting that as a win for the humans.
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