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 percent of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30 percent 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. The company built a team largely made up of former journalists and social media experts who have an eye for recognizing generic, sloppy content. These experts help train LinkedIn’s AI model on what authentic, useful posts look like. If the model flags a post as low-quality, AI-generated content, it’ll be less likely to be distributed beyond that user’s direct connections. The LinkedIn office on July 26, 2023, in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Also key to the strategy is a creator management team that acts as “content therapists” for executives, subject matter experts and other LinkedIn users, many of whom have gotten accustomed to the convenience of using AI to write what, on the surface, appear to be polished posts, Roth said. “A lot of times now today, they’ll run it through Claude or Gemini or wherever, they’ll post it on LinkedIn and it will perform poorly. And then they come to the team and they’re like, ‘Why did this do badly?’” Roth said. “And the best thing you can do is give it back to them and be like, ‘Did you enjoy reading this? Do you see yourself in this?” Instead, the team encourages users to embrace imperfection in their posts — to make videos by leaning a phone up against a coffee mug, rather than shooting in an expensive studio, or to dash off a post to start a conversation, even if it isn’t a complete thought. The efforts are showing early signs of success. Improvements to LinkedIn’s detection systems have resulted in a 40 percent decline in views of content classified as AI slop, the platform said last month. That’s not to say LinkedIn is entirely opposed to AI, Roth said, adding that “not everyone is a born communicator.” But failing to edit or personalize content means it’s less likely to reach a wide audience on the platform. “We just try to push people to be more human,” he said. “That is what is required to be able to cut through the noise.” The post Even LinkedIn is getting tired of your AI-written posts appeared first on Egypt Independent.
