How LinkedIn opened the door to AI slop

LinkedIn is covered in unreadable corporate garble. AI could be to blame.

A new study by AI detection startup Originality AI reveals just how thoroughly AI-assisted content has invaded LinkedIn’s feed. According to the study (which was first shared with Wired), more than half of long-length, English-language LinkedIn posts showed signs of AI usage. Sure, LinkedIn was an easy target for AI, specifically because of its now infamous professional-speak. But the company also built the problem themselves, introducing AI tools rapidly without setting up guardrails for authenticity. 

How much LinkedIn content is AI-assisted?

For their study, Originality analyzed 8,795 public LinkedIn posts over 100 words long that were published from January 2018 to October 2024. In the first five years, AI-assistance was negligible. But the platform saw a spike in early 2023, with the sudden availability of ChatGPT, leading to a 189% increase in AI-use from January to February. Since then, AI use has plateaued. 

But the lingering point of AI-assisted content is still notable. Isolating October 2024, Originality found 54% of posts showed signs of being AI-assisted. That means it’s more likely than not that the post was touched by an AI tool. Adam Walkiewicz, LinkedIn’s Head of Feed Relevance, notes that they don’t internally track how often AI is used in posts. “We do have robust defenses in place to proactively identify low-quality, and exact or near-exact duplicate content,” Walkiewicz writes in a statement. “When we detect such content, we take action to ensure it is not broadly promoted.

AI could be changing the composition of a LinkedIn post, too. Since the advent of ChatGPT, the word count of LinkedIn posts has also risen. In fact, the post length has moved parallel to AI usage; it spiked in early 2023, before lingering around a stable midpoint. Just three years ago, the average LinkedIn post was far below 500 words. Now, congruently with the rise of AI-generated text, the average has reached just under 1,500 words. 

What’s unclear from this data is the extent of AI manipulation. While LinkedIn is host to its fare share of AI slop, cut and paste from a chatbot into the platform, there’s also a significant amount of AI-powered editing. The 54% figure combines these two functions, though one is certainly more destabilizing than the other. The extent to which human-written posts have been replaced by AI, compared to merely being modified, remains a mystery. 

LinkedIn opened the AI floodgates

Of all the social media apps, LinkedIn was one of the most primed platforms for an AI content takeover. The app’s language is intentionally stilted and edited, conveying a tone of professionalism. That compares to somewhere like TikTok, which demands a level of originality or humor not easily achieved by a large language model. 

Still, LinkedIn itself may be partially to blame. The company has been working fast to incorporate AI into its interface, beyond that of many other social media companies. LinkedIn premium members can prompt AI to write their posts in-app, and can use their AI to think up smart comments about a linked article. They can even use AI to enhance their profiles. This isn’t “slop,” but it is artificial—by now, it’s impossible to tell whether a piece of commentary was written by a human or an in-app bot. While Meta and X have opted for alternate chatbots, LinkedIn has introduced AI to the posting problem itself, fueling that 54% figure.

All these platforms are dealing with AI overflow. Facebook is drowning in AI shrimp Jesuses, and Instagram’s infographic industry has been taken over by shoddy AI recreations. But 54% of LinkedIn posts is a particularly high figure—and a sign that you might want to scrutinize your LinkedIn feed more closely.

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