'AI' named the word of the year by Collins Dictionary

Defined as a term that describes ‘the modelling of human mental functions by computer programs’, AI has been named Collins Word of the Year 2023.

The use of the word 'AI' allegedly quadrupled over the last year. This was in part fuelled by AI chatbots designed to pass the Turing Test, such as Chat GPT.

In a blog post about the choice of word of the year, the dictionary platform stated: "The revolutionary AI-powered language model burst into the public consciousness in late 2022, wowing us with its ability to mimic natural human speech.... while people were understandably fascinated, they also started to get a bit anxious".

Recently, the music publishing world was rattled by the revolution in Artificial Intelligence when  three major music publishers filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, an AI lyric generator.

The Collins Dictionary said in their statement: "Considered to be the next great technological revolution, AI has seen rapid development and has been much talked about in 2023".

BREAKING NEWS The Collins Word of the Year is… AI.

Find out more about #CollinsWOTY 2023 and see the full list here: https://t.co/gmsnCqA0yv#wordoftheyear #CollinsDictionary #AI #artificialintelligence pic.twitter.com/3HZotbGGnJ

— Collins Dictionary (@CollinsDict) November 1, 2023

Other words that were in the shortlist included, 'de-influencer', a variation on the now well established phrase of 'influencer'. The dictionary stated that there were now many acceptable variations on the word such as mega-influencer, micro-influencer and nano-influencer. The dictionary publisher has now added de-influencer to the lexicon of influencer variants.

Defined as  "when one of these oracles uses their power “to warn followers to avoid certain commercial products, lifestyle choices, etc".

Other choice words were 'nepo-baby', short for 'nepotism baby' and popularised on internet spheres to describe someone's "whose career is believed to have been advanced by having famous parent".  Actress Gwyneth Paltrow had earlier this year described the popularity of this phrase as an 'ugly moniker'.

Another popular phrase from the internet sphere was 'canon event'- an experience “essential to the formation of an individual’s character or identity”.

Alex Beecroft, the managing director of Collins, said there was “no question” that AI had been “the talking point of 2023”.