Slopsquatting
Slopsquatting is registering a name that AI models tend to make up, such as a software package or a web address, to catch the people who trust the answer.
Slopsquatting is registering a name that AI models tend to make up, so that people who follow the model's answer end up somewhere the squatter controls. The word mixes "AI slop" with typosquatting, the old trick of registering misspellings of popular names.
It began with software. Coding assistants sometimes suggest a package that doesn't exist, and they often suggest the same made-up name again and again. Researchers have measured how often this happens. Anyone who spots one of those names can publish a package under it, and the next developer who installs what the assistant suggested runs their code.
Why it matters outside software
The same thing can happen to any name a model guesses at. Answers sometimes give a brand's web address, support email or product name slightly wrong: a .com when you're on .co.uk, a hyphen you never used, a product you don't make. If the same wrong version keeps coming up, someone can register it.
For example, say answers about Fernhill Coffee keep sending people to fernhillcoffee.com, while Fernhill's real site is fernhill.coffee. Whoever owns fernhillcoffee.com now gets a share of Fernhill's customers, and can show them whatever they like.
What you can do
- Say your real web address, email and product names plainly on your own site and in your structured data, so a model has less reason to guess
- Read what the answers give as your address and names, and look for versions that aren't yours
- Register the obvious variants of your domain while they're free
In AnswerOrbit
You can add your web address and product names as facts in Claims. We check every claim the answers make about you against your facts, so an answer that gives a different address shows up as contradicted, with the sentence that says it.