Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content
simonwillison.netI imagine the use of this term comes from the name for the leftover foodstuff that gets fed to pigs, usually from a bucket.
As a small scale pig farmer, I approve of the use of this term; I care enough about the welfare of my pigs that I would never risk feeding them anything that would be considered slop. Plus, pigs fed with slop usually end up tasting bad, because they are what they eat.
A wonderfully apt metaphor that reflects both the voracious appetites of modern AI systems and the resulting quality of the results.
See also: swill
It's been used in this meaning on 4chan for at least half a year, maybe more.
The "original" word, which "slop" came to existence, would have set internet on deeper fire if it got out of /pol/ today in light of events in israel and palestine.
"AI slop" can be found in archives as far back as 2022.
Without a doubt it originated there.
I was actually pondering the new delineation yesterday; the line between spam, propaganda, trolling, and censorship was never too fine as it is now.
I like the term slop. I needed the word yesterday.
LLM slop or AI slop totally works but slop just by itself is so generic, I doubt slop by itself will catch on but who knows.
Stop trying to make slop happen, it's not gonna happen.
I think it's happening. 2.3k likes on the tweet I quoted, and my Mastodon post with a screenshot of that tweet got 655 boosts already (which is a lot in that space). https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/112402587787781767
A few thousand likes on Twitter isn't all that many
I just can't help thinking of that Adam Sandler song LunchLady Land about sloppy joes when I see the word Slop.
Slop is an old term for allowed overlap between objects.
as a contrast to "slip" right?
Contrast? Not that I know of. Slip is a type of collision resolution that allows obstacles to slide off each other instead of just stopping. Similar to a circle rolling with slipping down an incline.
Slop is a word for waste water and messy animal food. Don't quite understand the debates here in the comments.
I like how it sounds similar to spam.
A good coin, this one. It needed a simple name, and it falls perfectly into a list of "four letter words."
slop is also unwanted food waste watered down and fed to swine.
Sounds like AI-generated content to me, especially since it's often fed into spam emails/comments/blog-posts.
Eh, the internet is full of garbage SEO-spam already. We have a word for that, which is enshittification, which imo correctly identifies the root perpetrators of the problem: platform owners utilizing monopolies.
I don't see why we need a word for AI-generated garbage specifically, not yet at least.
Like if I go onto google maps and search "Best restaurants in my area" it's going to 100% recommend fast-food chains that have purchased product placement. I don't feel AI plays a significant role in bad recommendations at this point, and to blaming/stopping AI wouldn't really help.
Enshittification means something entirely different: it's the inevitable decline of online services as they face the pressure to continually monetize.
Plenty of examples of enshittification have nothing to do with generative AI.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification mentions Cory's alternative definition of "platform decline".
Platform *decay seems inadequate though because it fails to make the distinction that the platform is declining specifically in quality and likely NOT in use.
Also I wouldn't call a particular blog post's content "enshittification" anyway. "Enshittification" is a process, not a particular type of content. We have plenty of terms for the latter, like "SEO spam" or "rage bait". I don't see anything wrong with someone trying to come up with a shorthand term for "unwanted AI-generated content"
They're only different if an individual is manually posting slop.
If a company is automatically posting slop, then the root of the problem is enshittification, and AI is just means.
If we forewent all words that are symptoms but not root problems, we would have very few words.
"Enshittification" is some sort of rug pull scam. Not AI spam...