LinkedIn will soon enable users to flag posts which appear to be "AI slop." However, the career-focused social media platform won't be using this data to remove or even discourage AI-generated posts. Rather, it appears the company will use the feedback to train its own algorithms. The upcoming update was announced on Thursday, with LinkedIn's chief product officer Hari Srinivasan stating that AI slop is a "top priority" for the company.
"We are ramping [up] the ability for members to tell us if they believe a post or comment seems like AI slop," Srinivasan wrote in a post on the platform. "Slop is hard to define and the definition changes; this lets us tune our models and make better feeds."
It's unclear exactly what he means by making LinkedIn's feeds "better," but it's unlikely that it involves the complete absence of generative AI. Srinivasan went on to express the belief that AI-generated posts and AI slop are not synonymous, arguing that people use AI to "refine their thoughts."As such, flagging AI-generated posts on LinkedIn could potentially deprioritise such content. Srinivasan further stated that LinkedIn is adding new classifiers to help identify AI slop and will reduce the amount shown in suggested content. However, it seems likely that the data will also help train LinkedIn's generative AI, so that its AI-generated content is less detectable.
