The weirdness of AI discussions in 2025 includes its own set of vocabulary, from AGI to agentic action, but one recently viral bit of slang I just can’t stand is “Clanker.”
You might see Clanker popping up on Reddit threads, Discord memes, or TikTok video comments as a blanket insult for anything vaguely AI-related. You might hear people call a chatbot interviewer for a job a Clanker, or a customer service rep that turns out to be a synthetic voice that is less than helpful.
The term is a classic sci-fi insult from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where it was a slur that clone troopers used for battle droids. Calling those metallic soldiers a name that’s basically an onomatopoeia for their tinny footstomps makes sense, and Clanker is a nice PG-level word that can be said in a cartoon for kids.
Using the term in the real world as an oblique shorthand for AI systems you dislike is an awkward fit at best. Not because it’s offensive to fictional robots. But because it’s limited in scope, technically inaccurate, and trivializes real issues around AI, while reinforcing mistakes in how people consider AI at a time when we need real conversations around the technology and how to deploy it in society.
Clunky Clanker
Calling a language model a Clanker is like calling your Wi-Fi lazy when it’s slow or hoping your computer had a nice nap when you put it in sleep mode. AI systems built from predictive statistics are not independent robots. And maybe if it only meant that the AI tools were being recalcitrant, I could deal with it, but it’s so obviously a term people use to try and seem edgy, it grates on my nerves. And using a goofy insult doesn’t magically turn your AI use into a punk rock move; it just implies you’re out of insult ideas.
It’s not even funny; it’s more of an inside joke that implies membership in a particular online subculture that is often the dullest spot online.
AI slang can be so much more evocative. That’s why terms like “hallucination” for a mistake by an AI model or referring to them as digital “copilots” feel like they have staying power. Even something as simple as calling AI-generated images and videos of dubious quality “slop” is at least very evocative. Clanker makes it sound like an AI model got stuck in Spirit Halloween, trying on costumes.
And while, of course, Clanker is not a slur against any real people, the point of the term in the cartoon is to reduce a sentient enemy into disposable junk. It’s supposed to show an ugly side of the clone warriors, how they talk about complex subjects in the simplest, ugliest possible way, without any nuance at all.
There are plenty of genuinely urgent things to say about AI right now. Questions of infrastructure control, environmental and societal harm, replication of human bias in AI algorithms, and more. None of that is advanced by yelling “clanker” into the void.
Language is messy and slang evolves, so I’m not demanding the term be banished with actual enforcement, but if we’re going to invent AI-related vocabulary, I’d prefer sharper terms. We can do better than clanker.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
