LinkedIn, a social network awash with long AI-generated posts from executives and other corporate workers, has introduced a new button that users can click to flag if a post “seems like AI slop,” according to 404 Media’s own tests.
If you have been anywhere near LinkedIn in the past couple of years, you have undoubtedly seen users posting blatantly AI-generated missives. Often these posts take some sort of news event, and opine on how this relates to thought leadership, or some other LinkedIn brainrot term. It’s also pretty wild the button specifically uses the term “AI slop” and not, say, “It seems this was generated with AI.”
Here’s what the button looks like, available when a user clicks on the three dots at the top of a post:
I scrolled for about six seconds before finding a post that sure looked like AI slop, based on the gratuitous spacing between single sentences, lists of takeaways, emoji use, and “X is not Y” sentence construction. When I clicked the “seems like AI slop button,” LinkedIn told me, “Thanks for letting us know. Your feedback helps improve the feed.” It then hid the post itself.
Earlier this month, 404 Media reported that AI detection service Pangram estimated 41 percent of long form posts and 30 percent of short form posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated. (Disclosure: Pangram previously ran an advertisement on 404 Media.)
If you Google “linkedin AI” or similar, there are a ton of guides — some on LinkedIn itself — telling people how to use AI to write their LinkedIn posts.
Jason Koebler
There is of course some irony in that LinkedIn itself has generative AI features. Its AI-powered writing assistant helps people “share personalized suggestions for your profile, to help you stand out and get noticed,” according to LinkedIn’s website.
After publication of this piece, Hari Srinivasan, chief product officer at LinkedIn, wrote their own post about the button. “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. Here are a few more changes to keep it that way,” he wrote.
The button in part will help LinkedIn tune its own models for identifying AI slop. “We are ramping up a series of new and improved classifiers that identify if a post is AI-slop or generally low-quality content. This will reduce the amount of AI slop you might see in suggested content and content from outside your network,” the post said. “We are ramping the ability for members to tell us if they believe a post or comment seems like AI slop. Slop is hard to define and the definition changes; this lets us tune our models and make better feeds.”
When previously asked for comment about the Pangram report, LinkedIn said it was taking steps to crack down on AI slop, and referred us to a policy change it made in May designed to disincentivize slop: “Professionals come to LinkedIn to hear from real people and their unique insights and perspectives. We actively work to reduce low quality, automated or generic content, and while AI can be used to beat the blank page problem, our focus is on surfacing professional conversations that help people advance their careers.”
Update: this piece has been updated to include a post from LinkedIn.
