At the end of 2025, editors at Merriam-Webster chose a word that perfectly captured the year’s digital mood: slop. Their definition was blunt and uncomfortable: “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”

The choice resonated instantly. 2025 was marked by AI-generated ads that felt off, declining search quality, and an overwhelming flood of synthetic music and content clogging platforms at scale. The term wasn’t just descriptive, it was cathartic.

Not everyone appreciated the jab.

In a year-end LinkedIn post, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, made it clear he’d like the industry and its users to move on.

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote, framing AI as a new “equilibrium” that humanity must learn to accept. In his view, the debate itself is holding progress back. The focus, he argued, should be on learning how to ride rapid improvements in model capabilities while managing AI’s “jagged edges” so it can deliver real-world value.

The language was familiar: progress, outcomes, discovery, inevitability. AI adoption, Nadella suggested, will be messy, just like every major technological shift before it.

But outside the boardroom, reality looks more complicated.

Users Are Pushing Back

Nadella’s comments land at a moment when many Microsoft users are doing something unusual: resisting. Despite years of nudges and deadlines, around one billion PCs were still running Windows 10 at the end of 2025, even though roughly half of them were technically eligible to upgrade to Windows 11.

That hesitation is not just about operating systems. For many users, Windows 11 has become synonymous with AI features that feel imposed rather than requested. Copilots, assistants, prompts, and automated summaries are increasingly baked in, with limited ability to opt out.

From a user perspective, this fuels the very frustration the word slop captures: more AI, more noise, and not always more value.

The Core Tension

What Nadella is really pushing back against isn’t a dictionary term, but a narrative. Calling AI output “slop” reframes the conversation away from innovation and toward quality, usefulness, and consent. It forces companies to answer uncomfortable questions:

Is this feature solving a real problem?
Does it improve how people work, or just prove that AI can be deployed?
Who decides where AI belongs in everyday tools?

For tech leaders, AI is a strategic imperative and a product roadmap. For users, it’s increasingly an experience that must earn its place.

Why This Matters for Businesses

For companies watching this unfold, there’s a clear takeaway. AI does not succeed simply because it exists or because leadership declares it inevitable. It succeeds when it delivers tangible outcomes, integrates cleanly into workflows, and respects the user’s need for control.

At Control F5 Software, we see this shift clearly. The conversation is moving away from “How much AI can we add?” toward “Where does AI actually make things better?” Less hype, more intent. Less volume, more signal.

Whether the industry likes it or not, the word slop stuck in 2025 because it reflected a real experience. Leaving it behind will require more than reframing the debate. It will require building AI products that users genuinely choose, not ones they tolerate.

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