Freelance writers for Take a Break’s Fiction Feast, Bauer Media’s monthly compendium of short stories, have been told their services are no longer required. In their place: stories that appear to be drafted by AI and credited to “The Fiction Feast Team.”

The change was reported by Press Gazette, which says that whole stories now appear to be produced with AI tools rather than commissioned from human authors. Bauer Media has not responded to requests for comment.

Press Gazette’s Dominic Ponsford framed the likely motive as financial. Costs are tight, and cutting freelance commissions may be a way to keep the title running while keeping the remaining named human authors in work. Ponsford presents this as a possibility, not an established fact, and acknowledges he cannot verify the underlying reason.

What makes this case notable is the setting in which the AI is being deployed. Fiction is among the creative forms readers are least likely to embrace when they learn it was generated by AI. That makes a magazine built around human-authored short stories an unusual place to test audience acceptance of synthetic writing, particularly when publishing under a house byline rather than clearly disclosing AI involvement.

The move fits a broader squeeze on paid creative work. The Author’s Guild has repeatedly called for AI-generated works to to be clearly labeled to prevent them from being passed off as human-written and to protect the market for human authors. Publishers introducing AI into creative publications are stepping into that dispute.

The decision comes amid a worsening climate for freelance writers and creative workers. Newsroom and publishing job cuts have accelerated, with the 2026 layoff wave already outpacing the previous year by early spring. Faced with those pressures, publishers may see AI-generated drafts as a way to cut down on freelance spending.

Traffic data in the same Press Gazette briefing shows why money is tight. Most of the top ten U.S. news websites lost more than 20% of their traffic year on year in June, with Substack the lone gainer at 25%. Buzzfeed fell 48% to 46 million monthly visits. Globally, 45 of the biggest news sites saw declines in April 2026 alone. Google’s expansion of AI Overviews and AI Mode in its home market is a major driver of those drops.

For newsrooms and publishers, the Take a Break decision offers an early look at a challenge more titles may soon confront. When search referrals fall and budgets shrink, the temptation to replace paid contributors with AI grows, and fiction is no longer off-limits. The open questions are whether readers notice, whether they care, and whether a house byline like “The Fiction Feast Team” counts as adequate disclosure.

Bauer has not addressed those questions publicly. The outcome could shape how other publishers think about AI in creative work: if readers see little distinction between commissioned fiction and AI-generated stories, publishers may feel more comfortable expanding such experiments. If readers object, the episode could underscore the reputational risks of introducing AI into publications built on human authorship.

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Merriam-Webster has named “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, officially enshrining a term that media professionals have been using all year to describe the avalanche of AI-generated junk flooding the internet.

The dictionary defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” That covers everything from bizarre AI-generated videos and off-kilter advertising images to fake news, junky AI-written books, and what Merriam-Webster calls “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time.

The choice reflects a year when AI output became impossible to ignore. Publications noticed.

“AI Slop is Everywhere,” warned The Wall Street Journal. “AI Slop Has Turned Social Media Into an Antisocial Wasteland,” reported CNET.

For newsrooms, the rise of slop creates a dual challenge. Outlets must now compete for attention against a tide of AI-generated content while also guarding against publishing slop themselves. The word’s selection signals how central this issue has become to public discourse about AI.

The etymology is fitting. “Slop” originally meant “soft mud” in the 1700s, evolved to mean “food waste” in the 1800s, and eventually became shorthand for rubbish.

Merriam-Webster’s editors noted the word carries a defiant tone. “In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking,” the dictionary wrote. “The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”

Other words making Merriam-Webster’s 2025 list included “touch grass,” meaning to participate in real-world activities instead of online interactions, and “performative,” describing actions done for show rather than substance.

The selection of slop as the year’s defining word suggests public sentiment around AI may be shifting from wonder to wariness.

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