"Merriam-Webster just named "slop" its word of the year, defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." The choice is blunt, almost mocking, and it captures something that has been building for months: a collective exhaustion with AI hype that promises intelligence but delivers mediocrity. Over the past three months, that exhaustion has started bleeding into Wall Street."
"CES 2026 is going to be ground zero for this tension. Every booth will have an "AI-powered" sticker on something, and a lot of those products will be genuine innovations built on real on-device intelligence and agentic workflows. But a lot of them will also be slop: rebranded features, cloud-dependent gimmicks, and shallow marketing plays designed to ride the hype wave before it crashes."
Merriam-Webster named "slop" as a term for low-quality AI-generated content, signaling widespread exhaustion with AI hype that promises intelligence but delivers mediocrity. Investor and executive concern about an AI bubble has grown, with leaders noting overexcitement and irrationality even as trillions flow into AI infrastructure while revenues lag. CES 2026 will showcase both genuine on-device innovations and numerous hype-driven, cloud-dependent gimmicks rebranded as AI. Distinguishing real AI from fake AI becomes essential for consumers and investors. A practical test is whether a feature continues to work when offline; true on-device AI operates locally using dedicated chips and stored models.
Read at Yanko Design - Modern Industrial Design News
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