Even LinkedIn is getting tired of your AI-written posts

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Bland, AI-generated posts have made LinkedIn the butt of many an internet joke this year. The platform has heard its users’ complaints about lengthy, generic missives never touched by human hands loud and clear.

As AI has made it easier than ever to create huge volumes of content cheaply and easily, that “slop” has flooded the internet. YouTube , Pinterest , Spotify and other platforms have all sought to limit the amount of spammy, AI-generated content their users see.

But LinkedIn has been hit especially hard. Scrolling through the professional networking site earlier this year could mean being bombarded by bullet-pointed lists accented by emojis, references to “B2B sales,” and asks for a follow or comment for more.

A report published in July by Pangram, a research firm that tracks AI content online, found that more than 40% of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30% on X and Medium and a smaller percentage on Reddit and Substack.

So now, LinkedIn is upping its fight against slop .

“I know you think you’re doing the right thing with your perfectly bulleted list and your hook at the top, and you followed all the advice from LinkedIn advisors across the internet,” LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth, who leads the platform’s content strategy, told CNN in an interview. “But what works is being human.”

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There is some irony in this, given that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. The tech giant has pushed for people to adopt its AI tools for everything from writing to coding, and it is up against steep competition from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. LinkedIn previously offered AI tools to edit or rewrite posts, although it recently scaled the offerings back.

But low-quality AI posts are a business problem for LinkedIn. They all start to sound the same, Roth said.

If users see too many generic AI posts, instead of content that really teaches them something or gives them a deeper understanding of a professional connection, LinkedIn risks losing them to other platforms.

In August, LinkedIn rolled out a button letting users flag when a post “seems like AI slop,” which was clicked more than 1 million times within its first two weeks. Now, the company is trying to use its own AI systems to help weed out AI slop on the platform and to remind LinkedIn users how to post like humans.

The company built a team largely made up of former journalists and social media experts who have an eye for recognizing generic, sloppy content. These experts help train LinkedIn’s AI model on what authentic, useful posts look like. If the model flags a post as low-quality, AI-generated content, it’ll be less likely to be distributed beyond that user’s direct connections.

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Also key to the strategy is a creator management team that acts as “content therapists” for executives, subject matter experts and other LinkedIn users, many of whom have gotten accustomed to the convenience of using AI to write what, on the surface, appear to be polished posts, Roth said.

“A lot of times now today, they’ll run it through Claude or Gemini or wherever, they’ll post it on LinkedIn and it will perform poorly. And then they come to the team and they’re like, ‘Why did this do badly?’” Roth said. “And the best thing you can do is give it back to them and be like, ‘Did you enjoy reading this? Do you see yourself in this?”

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Instead, the team encourages users to embrace imperfection in their posts — to make videos by leaning a phone up against a coffee mug, rather than shooting in an expensive studio, or to dash off a post to start a conversation, even if it isn’t a complete thought.

The efforts are showing early signs of success. Improvements to LinkedIn’s detection systems have resulted in a 40% decline in views of content classified as AI slop, the platform said last month .

That’s not to say LinkedIn is entirely opposed to AI, Roth said, adding that “not everyone is a born communicator.” But failing to edit or personalize content means it’s less likely to reach a wide audience on the platform.

“We just try to push people to be more human,” he said. “That is what is required to be able to cut through the noise.”

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今年，LinkedIn上大量由人工智能生成的枯燥乏味的帖子成了网络笑柄。用户们对冗长、千篇一律、未经人工润色的帖子怨声载道，而LinkedIn也对此深有体会。

人工智能使得海量内容的生成变得前所未有的便捷和廉价，但也因此导致大量“垃圾内容”充斥互联网。YouTube、Pinterest、Spotify 和其他平台都已采取措施，限制用户看到的垃圾信息和人工智能生成的内容数量。

但LinkedIn受到的冲击尤为严重。今年早些时候，浏览这个职业社交网站可能会让你看到铺天盖地的列表，其中穿插着表情符号、“B2B销售”之类的字眼，以及请求关注或评论以获取更多信息的请求。

追踪在线人工智能内容的调研公司 Pangram 在 7 月份发布的一份报告显示，该平台上超过 40% 的长篇帖子是由人工智能生成的，而 X 和 Medium 上的这一比例约为 30%，Reddit 和 Substack 上的比例则更小。

所以现在，LinkedIn正在加大力度打击低劣内容。

“我知道你认为你做的是对的，你的列表条理清晰，开头也很吸引人，而且你也遵循了网上所有LinkedIn顾问的建议，”LinkedIn首席编辑丹·罗斯（Dan Roth）在接受CNN采访时表示，他负责该平台的内容策略。“但真正有效的是保持人性化。”

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颇具讽刺意味的是，LinkedIn 隶属于微软。这家科技巨头一直力推用户使用其人工智能工具，涵盖从写作到编程的各个领域，但它也面临着来自 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等公司的激烈竞争。LinkedIn 此前曾提供过用于编辑或重写帖子的 AI 工具，但最近缩减了相关服务。

但低质量的AI帖子对LinkedIn来说是个商业问题。罗斯说，它们听起来都千篇一律。

如果用户看到的是太多通用的 AI 帖子，而不是真正能教会他们一些东西或让他们更深入了解职业关系的内容，LinkedIn 就有可能将他们流失到其他平台。

今年8月，LinkedIn推出了一项新功能，允许用户标记“疑似AI生成的垃圾内容”，该功能在上线两周内就获得了超过100万次的点击量。现在，该公司正尝试利用自身的人工智能系统来帮助清除平台上的AI垃圾内容，并提醒LinkedIn用户如何像真人一样发布内容。

该公司组建了一支主要由前记者和社交媒体专家组成的团队，他们善于识别千篇一律、粗制滥造的内容。这些专家帮助训练LinkedIn的AI模型，使其能够识别真实、有价值的帖子。如果模型将某个帖子标记为低质量的AI生成内容，那么该帖子被传播到用户直接联系人之外的可能性就会大大降低。

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罗斯表示，该战略的关键还在于一个内容创作者管理团队，该团队充当高管、主题专家和其他 LinkedIn 用户的“内容治疗师”，他们中的许多人已经习惯了使用人工智能撰写表面上看起来很精良的帖子所带来的便利。

“现在很多时候，他们会用 Claude 或 Gemini 之类的工具测试一下，然后发布到 LinkedIn 上，结果效果很差。之后他们就会来问团队：‘为什么效果这么差？’”罗斯说。“最好的办法就是把内容反馈给他们，问问他们：‘你们喜欢这篇文章吗？你们觉得这篇文章适合自己吗？’”

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相反，该团队鼓励用户接受帖子中的不完美之处——比如用手机靠在咖啡杯上拍摄视频，而不是在昂贵的摄影棚里拍摄；或者快速发布帖子来开启对话，即使它不是一个完整的想法。

这些努力已初见成效。LinkedIn上个月表示，对其检测系统的改进已使被归类为人工智能垃圾内容的浏览量下降了40%。

罗斯表示，这并不是说领英完全反对人工智能，他还补充说，“并非每个人都是天生的沟通者”。但如果内容没有经过编辑或个性化处理，就很难在平台上触达广泛的受众。

“我们只是想引导人们更加人性化，”他说。“只有这样，才能在纷繁嘈杂的环境中脱颖而出。”