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Generated content produced in volume and published without a reader in mind. The first coinage of this era to name a texture rather than a technology.

The genre of generated image made for older Facebook users: a soldier with a cake, a child with a carved wooden Jesus, a birthday nobody attended, all captioned 'why don't pictures like this ever trend'. The record's entry for slop with a target demographic.

The chatbot's favourite first word — 'Certainly! Here is…' — as the tell that a text was generated, alongside 'delve', 'tapestry' and a fondness for the em dash. The record's entry for the enthusiasm that gave the machine away, and for the humans who have started saying it.

A slur for a robot, borrowed from a cartoon and aimed at delivery bots and chatbots. The first insult of the AI era, and notably a joke about needing one.

The claim that most of the web is now machines talking to machines. Filed here without editorial comment, for reasons the reader may work out.

The 2025 realisation that the em dash — a chatbot's favourite punctuation — had become a tell, and the resulting decision by a lot of human writers to stop using a mark they had loved for years. The record has the discourse; this is the casualty.

A verb once used by nobody and now used by every machine. The first tell, and the first word to be ruined for human writers by association.

The theory that a dash proves a machine wrote it. Every writer who liked the dash has since been asked to prove they exist — including this one.