I had seen the #zuzai tag on mastodon a few times and had no idea what it was, but discovered a whole site dedicated to the new word. It’s pronounced like “zoo’s eye.” You might say an author uses a zuzai writing process, or a teacher requires a zuzai testing environment. Is it a little pretentious to set up a whole website to justify the weird, new retronym you just came up with in a fit of ennui? Maybe. But I like zuzai, it encapsulates something that currently takes a lot of words to otherwise explain, and I hope it worms its way into the public zeitgeist.
Having to make a whole website to make a cringe-ass word happen is so fetch
Urban Dictionary says: Fetch Stop trying to make it happen. It’s not going to happen. “That’s so fetch!” “Shut up, Gretchen. Stop trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen.” Fetch by KamIsTotallyFuckingAwesome May 17, 2011 Word of the Day on March 30, 2019
and also
fetch slang for cool or awsome. Used in mean girls by Grechen Weener. Omg Kadi you love him. That is so fetch. Grechen stop trying to make “fetch” happen! It’s not going to happen! fetch by Kayla February 8, 2005
But from context I can tell you mean the first one :)
Us older generation thank you.
I understand not everyone has seen Mean Girls, but it’s kind of funny that the film itself is ancient (22 years old I believe without looking it up)
Edit: Just checked. Yep, it came out in 2004.
What’s wrong with “no AI”?
“AI-free” is also apparently too many words
That won’t get you a book deal like a “new word” will. The author thinks this will make him the next Cory Doctorow.
Noai. This program/poster/image is noai. Easy.
It’s about framing. By saying “no AI” you’re acknowledging that the default selection is “AI”. By making a word for it you’re putting both concepts back on equal footing. That’s how I think about it at least.
Making a word for it is stronger reinforcement that everyone is treating ai as the default.
forced meme
That’s so stupid sounding. I’m not sure AI didn’t write it.
It’s quite annoying that it’s a recursive acronym, and I would imagine will add confusion and hinder any wider spread adoption, or at the very least understanding of it
Yeah, I’m not using this.
So hard to just say “no AI”
C’mon man. The cool kids haven’t made a new word in like 2 weeks now, and they’re itching to manufacture more distinguishing mannerisms and prove their edginess. So fetch; cro nap, slipwoosh.
So fetch

“An author doesn’t use LLM” does take too many words. It’s much faster to tell someone they use a “zuzai writing process” and then proceed to explain to them what that word means in the first place.
spam. slop. enshittification. we’ve had plenty of words enter everyday vocabulary. they all had to start somewhere (granted enshittification in particular is pretty easy to grasp without ever having seen it before).
Slop is not a new word at all. Spam is a name for then new concept. Also both happened much more naturally (hey, or organically) Enshittification is one word that was pushed by one person and people fell in love with it for some reason.
Look, invent new words. That’s how languages work. Especially languages like English. But then don’t complain that it’s too many words or there are no words to say “AI free”, because newly invented neologisms will always require more words in real conversations.
I mentioned the real problem (as perceived by me) below. I didn’t say we shouldn’t add new words to our languages at all. Admittedly, zuzai specifically also just happens to sound terrible and silly.









