Word of the Year: AI Sludge

Every facet of our Internet and online experience being polluted

Image: Badly edited by author

The ‘Word of the Year’ is a silly and often controversial bit of social commentary. What once seemed to be a way of spotlighting bigger issues in the world — previous words from the Oxford University Press include Credit Crunch and Carbon Footprint — seems to have descended into an exercise in picking the word that appeared the most on viral social media clips. Looking at you, Rizz.

Collins, which announced its word a few weeks ago, chose ‘Brat.’ Of course, it refers to a particular use case of the word Brat Summer (and not the sausage, though a sausage summer sounds delicious). I’m not even going to try and explain what that is or was because I don’t doomscroll enough brain rot to know, and, truthfully, I don’t give a fuck either. The Oxford Dictionary actually chose Brain rot (after a public vote). Runners up included dynamic pricing, demure, romantasy, lore and slop.

I like slop. It’s a fitting term for the torrent of subpar AI content we’ve seen of late. But it doesn’t pack enough punch. It doesn’t convey the sheer weight of the problem. For me, there is a term that better encapsulates the year, especially in the context of creativity and the future of the Internet —