Hallucineren (hallucinate) has been voted Dutch word of the year by the Van Dale dictionary group thanks to its popular use relating to AI-generated fake information.

The new meaning was added to the new edition of the dictionary earlier following “its broad use in AI applications”, Van Dale said on its website.

Used mainly in connection with chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, hallucineren is defined as “providing information not based on reliable information and which is therefore inaccurate or completely incorrect”.

AI is influencing language in other ways, senior editor Ton den Boon told Belgian paper De Morgen.

“Existing words are being given new meanings,” he said. “Take the verb to train, for instance. In the old days, people or animals were trained, now you can train a language model.”

This year the editors of the dictionary chose the word of the year instead of the public. They abandoned last year’s competition because of the reactions to the shortlist on social media and instead opted for polarisatie.

“Social media has made it impossible to have a fair and honest election,” Den Boon said.