In its latest effort to make an entirely corporate-themed social media platform seem cool, LinkedIn has added a feature where you can flag posts that seem “like AI slop”—its words, not ours.
On the surface, it’s a bold move from the Microsoft-owned platform, considering Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into AI and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. However, LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer, Hari Srinivasan, claims, “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," he wrote in a post on the platform.
Flagging a post as AI slop doesn’t actually mean it gets taken down, though; it just suppresses it and similar posts from your feed. It also "lets us tune our models and make better feeds," Srinivasan says. It’s AI all the way down.
LinkedIn is also working on a private flagging system so creators can see when users label their posts as AI slop. It will be visible from the creator’s analytics dashboard.
“We are ramping [up] 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,” says Srinivasan. He also distinguishes between AI and slop as separate, claiming that many people “refine thoughts” with AI and would like to know when they sound inauthentic (which apparently makes it not slop).
According to our testing, the AI slop button does not extend to comments at the time of writing.
In addition to the new button, LinkedIn is also removing its “enhance your post” feature—which lets users generate text with AI—and replacing it with a feature that “proofreads your words, but does not change your voice.” The exact distinction between the two features remains unclear.