LinkedIn to Launch Campaign Against ‘AI Slop’

Social networking platform LinkedIn will be detailing its plans on Wednesday to combat low-value AI content — aka AI slop — in its user feeds.

According to a report in Engadget, the changes will target everything from outright engagement bait to recycled “thought leadership” and other “generic” content that lacks authenticity and originality.

The report added that the company is also taking aim at posts and comments that show obvious signs of AI-generated content, such as “it’s not X, it’s Y” phrasing.

When identified by LinkedIn, Engadget noted, dubious posts will no longer appear in other users’ recommendations, though they’ll still be viewable to a person’s direct connections and followers.

Wednesday’s announcement is expected to provide details on how LinkedIn will distinguish between what adds perspective, context, or expertise to member engagement and what simply repeats existing ideas without contributing anything new.

Separating Expertise From Slop

Separating low-value AI content from legitimate expertise won’t be easy. “Detection is basically a moving target because the models keep getting better at sounding human,” said Jonathan Sterling, marketing director of Foxtown Marketing, a full-service marketing agency in Vero Beach, Fla.

“LinkedIn also can’t crank the dial too high without catching legitimate creators in the net, the ones who use AI as a writing assistant the way the rest of us use spellcheck,” he told TechNewsWorld. “And there’s the awkward business reality that volume drives ad inventory. Doesn’t really matter if the volume is any good,” he added.

The challenge for LinkedIn is that it cannot simply punish the use of AI, argued Ethan Yang, head of operations and strategy at CTGT, an AI research company in San Francisco.

“Many serious professionals use AI to edit, structure, or sharpen their writing,” he told TechNewsWorld. “The real distinction should be between AI-assisted expertise and AI-replaced expertise. If someone has done the research, has a real point of view, and uses AI to communicate it more clearly, that should not be treated the same as someone mass-producing engagement bait.”

Problem With Detection

Dustin Engel, co-founder and principal consultant at Elegant Disruption, a strategy and AI-focused consulting firm in Philadelphia, asserted that treating low-quality content as a simple AI-detection problem would be a mistake.

“Low-quality content existed long before generative AI, and plenty of high-quality content is legitimately AI-assisted,” he told TechNewsWorld. “So the real question is how do you reduce the spammy, repetitive, engagement-farming behavior without punishing normal use cases like editing, translation, or using AI to structure your thoughts?”

“And then there’s the practical reality that any rule you enforce at scale becomes a game,” he said. “Bad actors adapt quickly, and the platform has to manage false positives without creating a moderation environment that feels arbitrary or heavy-handed.”

The biggest challenge is that nobody can define AI slop cleanly without also sweeping up legitimate AI-assisted work, maintained Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst of SmartTech Research, a technology advisory firm in Las Vegas.

“A thoughtful post drafted with AI may be more valuable than a human-written post that says absolutely nothing,” he told TechNewsWorld. “LinkedIn has to police quality and authenticity without becoming the taste police.”

Cyndee Harrison, principal of Synaptic, a small-business marketing and PR consultancy in Grand Rapids, Mich., agreed that detection will be a big challenge for LinkedIn. “I was once a prolific user of dashes, hyphens, and ellipses because I do a lot of the types of business writing where that kind of punctuation is naturally found,” she told TechNewsWorld. “Now, of course, those are assumed to be red flags for AI-written content.”

“The folks at LinkedIn are going to find out that cracking down on AI is harder than they might imagine,” predicted Dan Kennedy, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.

“As the Engadget story points out, LinkedIn itself encourages its users to improve their posts with AI, and there are plenty of legitimate uses such as improving the wording of a press release that might get flagged,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“Overall, two cheers for LinkedIn,” he added. “I’ll hold off on the third cheer until we see what this looks like in practice.” Read the full article at https://www.technewsworld.com/story/linkedin-to-launch-campaign-against-ai-slop-180344.html