“AI垃圾”用英语怎么说？竟被韦氏词典评为2025年度词汇

据新华国际头条报道，韦氏词典编辑出版商美国韦氏出版公司日前宣布，将英文单词“slop”评选为2025年度热词，并将其定义为“通常由人工智能（AI）批量生成的低质量数字内容”。

Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called "slop". The word's proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year.

creepy /ˈkriːpi/ 令人毛骨悚然的

zany /ˈzeɪni/ 滑稽的

proliferation /prəˌlɪfəˈreɪʃn/ 扩散

图源：美联社

“Slop”作为名词指“泔水”“淡而无味的半流质食物”。

韦氏出版公司在其网站上表示，2025年大量劣质内容在互联网上泛滥成灾，包括荒谬的视频、失真的广告图像、庸俗的宣传内容、以假乱真的假新闻、由AI创作的质量低劣书籍以及被称为“工作废料”的低效工作报告等。

"It's part of a transformative technology, AI, and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous."

In other words, "you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books," said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster's president.

韦氏词典官网截图

这些内容既引发公众反感，却又被大量消费和传播。

韦氏出版公司表示，“slop”一词带有黏稠、不洁的语感，可以“无孔不入”。据韦氏词典，在18世纪，“slop”一词最早原意为“软泥”，19世纪时演变为“食物残渣”，如“猪食”，随后进一步引申为“垃圾”或“几乎没有价值的产品”。

"Slop" was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence".

该公司表示，2025年，在围绕AI潜在威胁的广泛讨论中，“slop”一词传达的是不那么恐惧、更多是讽刺和调侃的基调。该词也向AI传递了一个信息：在取代人类创造力方面，其表现有时并未如想象中“超级智能”。

To Barlow, the word brings a sense of hope. The dictionary's president says the spike in searches for the word reflects that people have grown more aware of fake or shoddy content, and desire the inverse.

"They want things that are real, they want things that are genuine," he said. "It's almost a defiant word when it comes to AI. When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI actually doesn't seem so intelligent."

shoddy /ˈʃɑːdi/ 劣质的

美国媒体报道称，韦氏词典年度热词由其编辑团队综合词汇搜索数据的增长情况选定，反映了当年社会关注的核心议题和公众情绪。美国科技媒体CNET报道称，AI垃圾已将社交媒体变成了“反社会荒漠”。

To select the word of the year, the dictionary's editors review data about which words have risen in search results and usage. Then they come to a consensus about which word best reflects the span of the year.

在中国互联网上，有人将“slop”译为“电子饲料”。

来源：美联社 极目新闻 新华国际头条 财经网 环球网

跟着China Daily

精读英语新闻

“无痛”学英语，每天20分钟就够！