LLM-Generated Content: What Makes Something Slop
Merriam-Webster named "slop" its 2025 Word of the Year. This essay examines what distinguishes useful AI-generated content from hollow output, drawing on Clement Greenberg's kitsch theory, the MINT Lab's taxonomy, and the author's daily experience shipping real work with AI tools. The test is simpler than you'd expect: does the text commit to a claim that could be wrong?