LinkedIn Is Adding A “Seems Like AI Slop” Button

LinkedIn is adding a “Seems like AI slop” button. If you tap it, LinkedIn shows the message, “Thanks for letting us know.” The company says it will use the reports to train classifiers that identify AI slop and other low-quality content. LinkedIn is also removing its “Enhance your post” feature (which used AI to rewrite posts) and is replacing it with a proofreader that supposedly will keep the writer’s voice.

The company says it blocks hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts daily, and cited a Cloudflare finding that bot traffic now exceeds human web requests. In early July, the AI-detection firm Pangram reported that about 41 percent of long-form written posts on LinkedIn are likely fully AI-generated. Reading LinkedIn everyday (as I do), I think that number is low.

LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan wrote, “AI slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this. People come to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas, and expertise.” He also wrote that slop is hard to define and that the definition changes.

Big AI slop tells include em dashes, throat-clearing phrases, and my favorite: contrastive construction (“it’s not x, it’s y”). These are easy for everyone to see, but this seems like a game of whac-a-mole. Generative AI is improving at an exponential rate. At some point, we won’t be able to tell – and, if you can’t tell the difference, there is no difference. (BTW, I personally added the em dash in the last sentence. I’ve been wanting to use one for over a year!)