AI Slop

AI slop is a pejorative term for digital content generated by artificial intelligence that is perceived as low in effort, quality or meaning and produced in high volume, by analogy with spam, to exploit the attention economy. It spans text, images, audio and video, and proliferates across social platforms, streaming services and reference sites, straining the moderation systems that communities rely on to maintain quality.

The term matters to Reddit because the platform's value rests on authentic human discussion, and a flood of machine-generated posts threatens both that authenticity and the capacity of volunteer moderators, who must triage mass-produced material that can be hard to distinguish from genuine contributions. The wider cultural salience of the problem is reflected in the word "slop" being named word of the year for 2025 by major dictionaries, and in episodes such as a literary magazine closing submissions after being overwhelmed by AI-written entries. On Reddit, AI slop connects to broader concerns about bot activity, manipulation of discussion, and the so-called dead-internet worry that automated content is crowding out people.