There’s a Grim New Expression: “AI;DR”

The internet is so overrun with AI that anywhere you go, you run the risk of accidentally stepping into a puddle of slop. If only there were a gallant gentleman always at hand to drape their coat over these muddy obstacles so you could avoid ruining your day.

It’s not quite on that level, but some netizens are proposing a new term to call out AI slop so other people can avoid wasting their time — or to just make fun of the person peddling it: “AI;DR,” or “ai;dr,” short for “AI, didn’t read.” 

This is of course a riff on the classic internet slang “TL;DR” — “too long; didn’t read” — which is used to both introduce a summary of a lengthy block of text or proclaim that it’s being ignored for its lengthiness. Now, the latter usage is being repurposed against AI.

We’re not ready to christen AI;DR a word of the year yet, but it does appear to be gaining moderate traction online, after a recent post on Threads drew attention to it. 

“We all need to adopt that right quick,” one user on Bluesky said of the phrase, in a semi-viral post.

The term has been used in the past, but never took off. Anti-AI sentiment, however, is higher than ever. The actual word of the year for 2025, as crowned by Merriam-Webster, was “slop,” a testament to just how much AI backlash has escalated in a pretty short amount of time, even as seemingly the entire economy doubles down on pouring money into the tech.

A programmer who goes by Sid enthused about the new slang. 

“For me, writing is the most direct window into how someone thinks, perceives, and groks the world,” Sid wrote in a blog post. “Once you outsource that to an LLM, I’m not sure what we’re even doing here. Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn’t be bothered to write?”

Taking a “glass half full” outlook, it’s grim that this is a necessary measure in the first place. On the flip side, at least more of us are choosing not just to ignore slop, but to bully the people spreading it.

TL;DR: AI;DR calls out AI slop and warns other humans not to bother.

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