BEYOND VIRTUAL

Remember that unsettling statistic from last week’s issue? 88% of companies are using AI, but only 6% are actually winning with it.

Well, there's another problem lurking beneath all of this, and it has a name now.

Merriam-Webster just named it their 2025 Word of the Year: "Slop."

That's not a typo. It's the official term for what's flooding the internet right now - low-quality digital content produced in quantity by AI. And if we're not careful, our AI strategy might be building a slop factory.

Feature Story

2025's Word of the Year "Slop" is Poisoning Your Brand

When the dictionary makes a word about AI-generated garbage its Word of the Year, you know we’ve hit an inflection point.

Merriam-Webster didn’t choose "slop" as its 2025 Word of the Year just to be clever. They chose it because the numbers are showing that over 50% of all English-language web content became AI-generated… and most of it is terrible.

According to a 2025 study by the SEO firm Graphite, the share of new English-language web articles that are AI-generated surpassed 50% by May of this year - a staggering leap from just 5% before the launch of ChatGPT.

We’re not talking about occasional typos; we’re talking about an avalanche of generic, soulless content that says nothing, helps no one, and exists purely because it was cheap and fast. And as an AI enthusiast myself, it pains me to admit it: too much AI really is hurting us.

The Crisis is Hiding in Plain Sight

One in five YouTube videos is now AI-generated "slop." Think about what that does to your audience’s patience.

This might be why your AI ROI is stalled. If your AI strategy amounts to "generate more stuff faster," you're not creating value; rather, you’re contributing to the noise. You're training your audience to scroll past anything that smells automated - and they're getting very good at smelling it.

High performers (the top 6%) don't use AI to produce more; they use it to produce better. It’s also kinda ironic that two years ago, we celebrated "authenticity" as Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. Today, we’re drowning in noise. Let’s not be the reason people keep scrolling.

Visionary Voices

Timothy Snyder's Warning: Don't Let AI Turn Everything Into Mush

Yale historian Timothy Snyder has been writing about something that should terrify every business leader: what happens when we stop thinking and just let the algorithm decide.

He calls it AI Mush. It's that safe, soulless version of communication that sounds professional but says nothing. You know what I'm talking about - those marketing emails that could've been written for anyone, about anything. Those LinkedIn posts that use ten buzzwords and zero actual insight.

Here's Snyder's core warning, and pay attention because this is where most companies are screwing up: "anticipatory obedience." That's when you start shaping your communication to please the algorithm instead of your actual audience. When you let the machine lead, you lose what he calls your "discriminating eye."

Translation for the rest of us: when we stop questioning AI output, when we stop applying human judgment to what the machine produces, we end up with mush. We end up with slop.

Someone still has to decide what "good" looks like. Someone still has to know when to trust the system and when to step in.

That someone can't be the AI. Why? Because AI will happily produce slop all day long if we let it.

It’s 2026, are you sure you’re still in control of what AI creates for you?

Want to check your “AI-detection” skills? Here’s a fun interactive game https://humanornot.so/

The Trend

2026: The Rise of the "Human Authenticator"

This may be old news, but it deserves more attention than ever, especially in 2026. Digital generalists are being phased out by specialists - someone who knows how to manage AI to prevent it from producing slop: the AI-Expert Virtual Assistant.

Here's what that actually looks like in practice. A specialized AI-Expert VA brings three critical capabilities:

Contextual Intelligence. AI can write, but a specialized VA knows your "why." They understand your brand voice, your client's specific history, and your industry's nuances. They know the difference between content that sounds right and content that is right. (Trust me on this one.)

The Quality Layer. These VAs perform systematic spot checks on AI output. They're proofreading for grammar, checking for brand alignment, factual accuracy, and tone consistency. They're the human filter that keeps slop from reaching your audience.

Prompt Engineering. Specialized VAs are learning to manage "agentic workflows" - tuning the AI systems so they produce better output from the start. They're refining prompts, adjusting parameters, and building feedback loops that make the AI smarter over time.

This is how you’ll hit the top 6%. You must leverage AI for scale while keeping human judgment at the helm. And these AI-Expert VAs act as the bridge between your strategy and execution. They categorize your workflow into three essential buckets:

• Autonomous: Tasks the AI handles end-to-end.

• Hybrid: Tasks the AI drafts, but a human reviews.

• Manual: Critical steps that AI shouldn't touch.

As AI tools get more powerful, the temptation to automate everything grows stronger - but so does the risk of producing slop. With audiences getting better at spotting generic content every day, you need someone on your team who's equally skilled at preventing it.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The gap between AI winners and AI losers in 2026 isn't about who has the most advanced tools. It is a quality gap - the difference between companies using AI to produce more, and those using it to produce better.

Slop is easy to produce, but quality? Quality takes discipline. It takes human judgment. It takes someone who cares about the difference between content that fills space and communication that creates value.

Now ask yourself this, “Do I have the systems and people in place to make sure that using AI is beneficial for me?”

Because in a world where half the internet is AI-generated, and around 20% of YouTube is slop, the businesses that win will be the ones whose content doesn't feel like it came from a machine. Even when it did.

We’ve moved past the era of 'how to create' and into the era of 'what to keep.' That is a curation problem - and it’s one no algorithm can solve.

Until next time,