LinkedIn Takes On AI Slop
LinkedIn has announced a series of changes aimed at reducing low-quality AI-generated content across its platform, marking one of the clearest signs yet that even technology companies are recognising the growing need to balance artificial intelligence with authenticity.
What Has LinkedIn Announced?
The professional networking platform says it’s introducing several new measures designed to reduce what it describes as “AI slop” while preserving the legitimate use of AI to help people communicate more effectively.
One of the most noticeable changes is a new option allowing users to flag posts or comments they believe appear to be AI-generated or inauthentic. The “Seems like AI slop” feedback option is being added to the menu available on posts and comments, enabling members to help LinkedIn identify content that feels generic, repetitive or heavily automated.
LinkedIn also says it’s retiring one of its own AI writing tools. The existing “Enhance your post” feature, which rewrote users’ posts using generative AI, is being replaced with a proofreading tool that corrects grammar and clarity without changing the author’s writing style.
Explaining the change, LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan said: “We asked ourselves why do people post with AI anyway? The answer is LinkedIn isn’t a one-word kind of place and they feel more confident running their posts through AI. We’re taking this learning, removing the ‘enhance your post’ feature… & replacing with a feature that proofreads your words, but does not change your voice.”
Why Is LinkedIn Making These Changes?
The announcement seems to reflect growing concern that AI-generated content is beginning to overwhelm professional social networks.
For example, over the past couple of years, LinkedIn has become increasingly associated with formulaic “thought leadership” posts, generic career advice and highly polished personal stories that many users suspect have been written largely by AI rather than the people publishing them.
LinkedIn itself acknowledges that maintaining authentic human interaction has become a priority.
As Srinivasan wrote in a recent LinkedIn post: “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.”
The company does, therefore, appear to be attempting to distinguish between thoughtful use of AI and content that contributes little value while reducing trust in the platform.
Tackling Automation At Scale
The new reporting feature is only one part of LinkedIn’s wider effort. According to Srinivasan, the platform is already detecting and blocking enormous volumes of automated activity before users ever see it.
He revealed: “On comments alone, every day we are now catching hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts, and have blocked billions of other automation attempts (posting at scale, slop) in the last couple months alone.”
LinkedIn also says it’s deploying new AI classifiers designed to identify low-quality or AI-generated content before it is widely recommended to users.
Rather than relying solely on automated detection, however, the company also wants human judgement to play a greater role. Members who publish content will begin receiving private feedback within their analytics dashboard when other users believe a post appears overly reliant on AI or lacks authenticity.
Srinivasan explained the reasoning behind this approach, saying: “AI and slop are not the same thing; many people refine thoughts with AI, and we believe they want to know when they sound inauthentic.”
How Big Is The Problem?
Although LinkedIn has not published figures showing how much AI-generated content appears on the platform, independent research suggests the issue has grown rapidly.
For example, Originality.ai recently analysed 5,000 public LinkedIn posts containing more than 100 words and concluded that 81.2 per cent were likely to have been generated using AI. The study uses its own detection methodology and does not represent LinkedIn’s own measurement, although the findings broadly reflect growing concerns among users about the volume of generic AI-assisted content.
Whether the precise figure is accurate or not, LinkedIn’s own actions indicate that it considers low-quality AI content to be affecting the quality of conversations taking place across the platform.
The company is also expanding profile and page verification to help users better understand who is publishing content, while giving members greater control over the comments they see from company pages.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
For businesses, LinkedIn’s announcement reinforces the increasingly important principle that authenticity is becoming a source of competitive advantage.
Artificial intelligence remains an extremely valuable tool for improving grammar, refining ideas and overcoming writer’s block. However, organisations relying on AI to produce generic marketing messages or manufactured thought leadership may find that both audiences and social media platforms become increasingly effective at recognising and filtering that content.
These new measures by LinkedIn also reflect a broader change in how AI is being positioned within professional communication. Rather than replacing an individual’s expertise or voice, the emphasis seems to be shifting towards using AI to strengthen what people genuinely want to say while preserving their own knowledge, experience and perspective.
Businesses investing in content marketing, employer branding and executive thought leadership should therefore focus on demonstrating genuine expertise rather than simply increasing output. Original insights, practical experience and authentic opinions remain difficult for AI to replicate convincingly, and LinkedIn’s latest changes suggest those qualities are likely to become even more valuable as the platform continues refining how it identifies and promotes high-quality content.
