New York — Bland, AI-generated posts have made LinkedIn the butt of many an internet joke this year. The platform has heard its users’ complaints about lengthy, generic missives never touched by human hands loud and clear.

As AI has made it easier than ever to create huge volumes of content cheaply and easily, that “slop” has flooded the internet. YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify and other platforms have all sought to limit the amount of spammy, AI-generated content their users see.

But LinkedIn has been hit especially hard. Scrolling through the professional networking site earlier this year could mean being bombarded by bullet-pointed lists accented by emojis, references to “B2B sales,” and asks for a follow or comment for more.

YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify and other platforms have all sought to limit the amount of spammy, AI-generated content their users see.
YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify and other platforms have all sought to limit the amount of spammy, AI-generated content their users see.
Maria Korneeva/Moment RF/Getty Images
New York —

Bland, AI-generated posts have made LinkedIn the butt of many an internet joke this year. The platform has heard its users’ complaints about lengthy, generic missives never touched by human hands loud and clear.

As AI has made it easier than ever to create huge volumes of content cheaply and easily, that “slop” has flooded the internet. YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify and other platforms have all sought to limit the amount of spammy, AI-generated content their users see.

But LinkedIn has been hit especially hard. Scrolling through the professional networking site earlier this year could mean being bombarded by bullet-pointed lists accented by emojis, references to “B2B sales,” and asks for a follow or comment for more.

A report published in July by Pangram, a research firm that tracks AI content online, found that more than 40% of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30% on X and Medium and a smaller percentage on Reddit and Substack.

So now, LinkedIn is upping its fight against slop.

“I know you think you’re doing the right thing with your perfectly bulleted list and your hook at the top, and you followed all the advice from LinkedIn advisors across the internet,” LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth, who leads the platform’s content strategy, told CNN in an interview. “But what works is being human.”

There is some irony in this, given that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. The tech giant has pushed for people to adopt its AI tools for everything from writing to coding, and it is up against steep competition from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. LinkedIn previously offered AI tools to edit or rewrite posts, although it recently scaled the offerings back.

But low-quality AI posts are a business problem for LinkedIn. They all start to sound the same, Roth said.

If users see too many generic AI posts, instead of content that really teaches them something or gives them a deeper understanding of a professional connection, LinkedIn risks losing them to other platforms.

Fighting AI slop

In August, LinkedIn rolled out a button letting users flag when a post “seems like AI slop,” which was clicked more than 1 million times within its first two weeks. Now, the company is trying to use its own AI systems to help weed out AI slop on the platform and to remind LinkedIn users how to post like humans.

Source: CNN