"AI" chosen as keyword of 2023

Collins said the publisher's lexicographers agree that the tech term has "rapidly increased in popularity" and is set to become a major topic of conversation in 2023.

"We see AI as a big focus this year, seeing how the technology has evolved and become so ubiquitous in our lives, like email, streaming, or things that were once seen as futuristic possibilities that are now everyday technologies," said Alex Beecroft, chief executive of Collins Publishing.

Collins said the publisher's language experts analyzed the Collins Corpus system - a database containing more than 20 billion words with material gathered from websites, newspapers, magazines and books published around the world.

In addition, the Collins Corpus also collects audio files from radio, television, and everyday conversations. New data is added to the Collin Corpus every month to help the lexicographers working at Collins identify vocabulary and their meanings from the moment they are first used.

"Our Collins Corpus monitoring shows how interesting it is that people are using this keyword (AI) and it's clearly a topic worth talking about in 2023," Beecroft said.

In addition to “AI,” other keywords that made the Collins list included “nepo baby,” a popular term used to describe the children of celebrities who have succeeded in similar fields as their parents; “Greedflation,” a term used to describe businesses raising prices on goods and services and creating inflation to boost profits; and “Ulez,” an ultra-low-emission zone where owners of high-emission vehicles pay a fee to enter.