By Fisher Phillips Merriam-Webster named “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year, citing the explosion of low-quality, AI-created digital content that now clogs our inboxes and social feeds. While employers and business leaders should view this news as a warning, it can also be an opportunity to set yourself apart. By combining the power of AI with a healthy dose of human judgment, you can capture the authenticity that people will crave more than ever in 2026. We’ll take a look at what slop is, discuss the problems it can cause and provide you with some practical steps you can take to eliminate it. WHAT “AI SLOP” LOOKS LIKE AT WORK 2025 was the year that AI slop showed up in every aspect of your job. No doubt you have started to see an increase in: ∙ Generic emails and corporate communications that all start to sound the same (sounding official but not saying much of anything) ∙ Business content that’s repetitive, vague and quite possibly wrong ∙ Resumes and cover letters that almost sound too good to be true, exactly matching your job postings ∙ Performance self-evaluations or reviews containing flowery language and corporate jargon about “synergy” and “leveraging core competencies” ∙ Marketing copy that looks polished at first glance but is immediately forgettable WHY EMPLOYERS SHOULD CARE AI slop is annoying, no doubt. But it’s not just an inconvenience — it’s a real business risk. (See what we did there? Did you cringe when you read that last sentence?) Here are some reasons why you should be concerned about the proliferation of slop in your workplace: ∙ Brand Erosion: Low-quality content lets customers, recruits and employees know that you don’t care enough about them to put in the time to create quality work. Once that perception sets in, it’s hard to reverse. ∙ Productivity Theater: AI slop often looks like productivity because your employees are churning out a lot of work in a short period. But what they’re actually doing is creating more downstream work through the inevitable revisions, clarifications and clean-up. ∙ Cultural Damage: When employees are encouraged (explicitly or implicitly) to outsource their thinking to a robot, they can drift away from human judgment and creativity. This is a dangerous shift for any organization. ∙ Legal Exposure: Sloppy AI-generated policies, contracts or employment communications can misstate legal obligations and conflict with existing policies. Here’s How Employers Can Get Smarter About AI Use in 2026 WVADA NEWS 18
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTg3NDExNQ==