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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- LinkedIn announced a “Seems like AI slop” button.
- Users can report low-quality AI-written posts.
- AI slop posts are ubiquitous on the internet.
As LinkedIn has solidified itself as a corporate influencer site-slash-job-hunting search engine, there’s something that irritates users more than the cog-in-the-corporate-machine posters themselves: AI slop.
Someone mentioning that the most important executive-level lessons aren’t discovered in a boardroom — but in some other innocuous and unrelated setting. A callout to today’s “fast-paced world.” Several short, jab-like sentences. Dramatic line breaks. Wrapping up the post by encouraging the reader to “let that sink in.” And honestly? The entire post ends up being a big, fat nothingburger.
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Do you recognize this prose? AI-written text posts are all over the internet, and LinkedIn is a breeding ground for them. An Originality.ai study found that 81% of long-form posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-generated. Users are growing frustrated, and LinkedIn is vowing to do something about it.
What is AI slop?
According to Merriam-Webster, AI slop (noun) is “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The term has become so popular that this definition is the first in the updated dictionary under “slop,” and the Associated Press created an entry for it in the latest edition of its writing and editing guide for journalists.
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AI slop can refer to thoughtless, mass-produced AI-generated images, music, videos, and text posts whose creators hope to game an algorithm, generate views and clicks, and make money. Are you familiar with “Fruit Love Island“?
How LinkedIn is fighting AI slop
Hari Srinivasan, chief product officer at LinkedIn, posted on the site detailing how the company is combating swaths of AI-generated content. In his post, Srinivasan said the platform has invested in its automated defenses, especially in the comments section. Srinivasan’s post also said that the platform is introducing new classifiers to identify low-quality content.
However, Srinivasan acknowledged that not all AI-generated content is slop, as some people use AI to refine their raw thoughts, and more users can recognize when AI-generated posts are made in good faith or are mindless and disingenuous.
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Though LinkedIn is deploying automated models to recognize slop posts, Srinivasan said real user feedback is more valuable, and encouraged users to use the new “Seems like AI slop” button to report suspected posts. People who create posts will be able to privately see in their dashboards when their audience members feel their posts are inauthentic and slop-adjacent.
As a result, users should see fewer slop-like posts in their suggested content feed from users outside of their networks, and posts suspected of being slop will have a smaller reach.
Why does LinkedIn attract so much AI slop?
LinkedIn’s posting culture can sometimes reward performative “hustle culture” and constant “C-suite level thought leadership” posts, which creates a byproduct of some people posting hollow, low-effort content on these topics to stay relevant and visible.
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According to Hootsuite, LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards topic relevance, post engagement, and topic consistency. So, someone who makes two to three AI-generated posts a day about “C-suite level thought leadership” with hundreds of AI-generated comments underneath it will experience wider reach and increased engagement than someone who has real thoughts to share on the same topic two to three times a month.
LinkedIn isn’t the only online platform looking to decrease the amount of AI slop users encounter. Substack, a digital writing and newsletter tool, announced a partnership with Panagram, an AI detection company, to show readers how much of a Substack post may be AI-generated.
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Several threads in Reddit communities parrot a growing annoyance with AI-sloppy text posts online. These posts are everywhere, from book communities to a women’s golf subreddit.
Perhaps no one predicted that ChatGPT would be used to engagement farm all over the internet at its inception in 2023. Yet, chatbot “speech” patterns are all over the internet now. AI slop posts may not be going anywhere anytime soon, but digital platforms are taking steps to curb their reach and popularity.
