Introduction You might not be familiar with the term “slop” when it comes to artificial intelligence, but it’s likely something you’ve encountered. In the fast-evolving digital landscape, “slop” has become a catch-all phrase for low-quality or undesirable AI-generated content across social media, art, literature, and increasingly, search engine results.
What is ‘Slop’? Imagine Google suggesting adding non-toxic glue to make cheese stick to a pizza—that’s slop. A bargain-basement digital book that almost matches what you were looking for? Slop again. Random posts cluttering your Facebook feed? More slop. The term gained traction last month after Google integrated its Gemini AI model into its U.S.-based search results. Instead of simply providing links, the search engine now attempts to answer queries directly with an “AI Overview,” a snippet at the top of the page generated by Gemini. This change was a response to Microsoft’s similar AI integration into Bing, but it wasn’t without hiccups, leading Google to roll back some features to fine-tune the technology.
Impact on Search Engines With major search engines prioritizing AI, it seems that AI-generated content—often hastily produced and not always accurate—will be a staple of internet life moving forward. The term “slop” evokes images of unappetizing food being shoveled into troughs, symbolizing how AI-assisted searches can feel unpalatable to critical thinkers.
Expert Opinions Kristian Hammond, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence, pointed out a fundamental issue: AI Overview presents information as definitive answers rather than starting points for further exploration. “You search for something and get back what you need in order to think—it actually encourages you to think,” Hammond explained. “What it’s becoming, in this integration with language models, is something that does not encourage you to think. It encourages you to accept. And that, I think, is dangerous.”
Origins of ‘Slop’ The term “slop” emerged in response to AI art generators released in 2022. Developer Simon Willison, who has advocated for the term’s use, noted that it was already in circulation before he adopted it. “I think I might actually have been quite late to the party!” he said via email.
Slang and Community Jargon Slop has gained currency on platforms like 4chan, Hacker News, and YouTube comments, where users often use niche jargon to demonstrate their expertise. “What we always see with any slang is that it starts in a niche community and then spreads from there,” said language expert Aleksic. “Usually, coolness is a factor that helps it spread, but not necessarily. We’ve had a lot of words spread from coding nerds, right? Look at the word ‘spam.’ A word is usually created by a group with shared interests and a need to invent words.”
Short-Term Impact In the short term, the impact of AI on search engines and the broader internet may be less dramatic than feared. News organizations worried about declining web traffic as people rely more on AI-generated answers, but data from Chartbeat, a company tracking internet traffic, shows that the initial drop in referrals from Google Discover to websites has rebounded. In the first three weeks of AI overviews, overall search traffic to over 2,000 major U.S. websites actually increased.
Future Implications As AI continues to shape the internet, Simon Willison, a self-identified AI optimist, believes that “slop” could become the standard term for inferior machine-generated content. “Society needs concise ways to talk about modern AI—both the positives and the negatives,” he said. “‘Ignore that email, it’s spam,’ and ‘Ignore that article, it’s slop,’ are both useful lessons.”
Conclusion The journey of AI integration is ongoing, with companies like Google and Microsoft continually refining their approaches. As users become more accustomed to AI’s role in daily digital interactions, the industry must balance innovation with quality to ensure that “slop” remains a temporary bump on the road to more sophisticated AI applications.