If you've been on Instagram or Reddit lately, you've probably seen people complaining about "AI slop" taking over their feeds. No, it's not food-or a new skincare trend.
"Slop" is Gen Z's newest way of mocking the avalanche of low-quality, AI-generated content that's flooding the Internet.
Slopper: The Latest Slang
In Gen Z speak, slop refers to anything that looks, sounds, or reads like it was spat out by an algorithm: Generic essays, uncanny AI art, recycled blog posts, or those cursed AI song mashups that sound almost human but not quite.
Basically, if it feels soulless, repetitive, and a little too polished to be real, it's "slop." The word slop has alse given rise to the word "slopper".
As Fast Company notes, the term has even spawned fresh insults for people who rely too much on AI-like "slopper" (someone who churns out or mindlessly consumes AI content) or the particularly savage "Groksucker," aimed at those overly enthusiastic about chatbots like X's AI's Grok. Because, of course, nothing on the internet becomes popular without being mercilessly mocked.
So, in simple terms: "Slop" is what happens when the Internet trades creativity for convenience. So naturally, the person producing or mindlessly consuming that content? That's your "slopper."
The Rise Of AI Use
The rise of "slop" captures the mood perfectly: a mix of fascination and fatigue. The AI boom promised efficiency, creativity, and endless possibilities.
What we got instead? Feeds full of lookalike art, essays that read like bad self-help manuals, and people outsourcing their opinions to bots. Gen Z, never one to miss a meme moment, responded the only way they know how-with a new word.
Recent data shows roughly 1.7-1.8 billion people worldwide have used an AI or generative AI tool at least once, with an estimated 500-600 million engaging daily as of 2025.
To be clear, "slop" isn't officially in dictionaries (yet), and context is key. In online spaces about tech and creativity, calling something "slop" means it's AI-made and lacks originality. But in broader conversations, the term also hints at something deeper: a collective boredom with automation and a yearning for authenticity in a world increasingly written by code.
Example in a sentence? "That essay sounds like ChatGPT wrote it in its sleep-total slop."
So next time you see a suspiciously perfect photo or eerily generic post, you'll know what to call it.