New feature comes amid increasing AI-generated content on the platform
LinkedIn is introducing a new feature that is targeting "AI slop" in the platform, as it acknowledged a surge of automated content as of late.
The professional networking platform is rolling out a new "Seems like AI slop" button to users, allowing them to report low-quality content that they believe might be generated by artificial intelligence.
"We are ramping the ability for members to tell us if they believe a post or comment seems like AI slop," said Hari Srinivasan, chief product officer at LinkedIn, in a statement. "Slop is hard to define and the definition changes; this lets us tune our models and make better feeds."
Srinivasan said they are also testing a way to privately flag users when members feel their post may have come off as inauthentic or heavily used AI.
"This approach is based on two learnings. First, AI and slop are not the same thing; many people refine thoughts with AI, and we believe they want to know when they sound inauthentic," the chief product officer said.
"Second, we want members to get feedback from real humans on what sounds authentic - not just have an AI detector review it and get it wrong."
Srinivasan pointed out that some users feel more confident when running their posts through AI, and will be helping them out with new features.
"We're taking this learning, removing the 'enhance your post' feature you see when you write a post or message & replacing with a feature that proofreads your words, but does not change your voice," he said.
Addressing AI slop at LinkedIn
The new measures acknowledge the rise of AI-generated content within LinkedIn, a platform that professionals use to connect and network with other professionals.
Srinivasan noted that they have been catching "hundreds of thousands of automated comment attempts" at LinkedIn. They have also blocked other automation attempts, such as slop and posting at scale, in the last couple of months alone.
"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," Srinivasan said.
As part of its measures in addressing AI at LinkedIn, the platform is also adding ways to enable users to moderate what they see on their feed.
"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," Srinivasan said.
"Finally, we continue to expand profile & pages verification so members know who they are connecting with and who is writing the content they are reading. You'll also be able to block any comments from Company pages you no longer want to see."
AI slop is a kind of content that has been emerging across the internet as of late, referring to low-quality, unwanted digital content created in large amounts using generative AI.
