We are officially living in the era of “slop.” Merriam-Webster has crowned the AI-derived term its Word of the Year (AP), defining it as the “fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous” output of the generative age. While the public mocks the aesthetic, the infrastructure is being quietly cemented. In the UK, a government plan to let artists “opt out” of AI scraping has garnered virtually zero support (The Guardian), suggesting the battle for consent may already be lost. Instead, the AI creative marketplace future might look more like that hinted at in the Disney/OpenAI deal, which I write about in Diacritical.
Legacy institutions are facing their own structural failures. The Louvre shuttered Monday due to a strike (Euronews), with staff protesting working conditions just weeks after a major jewel heist. In Hollywood, the bidding war for Warner Bros (The Hollywood Reporter) has become a spectator sport.
The Whitney Museum is naming 56 artists to its 2026 Biennial (ARTnews) in an attempt to interrogate “kinship and infrastructure” amidst the noise. And for those exhausted by the high-low divide, the LA Review of Books suggests we are seeing a resurgence of the “Middlebrow” (LA Review of Books).
All today’s stories below
