1M LinkedIn Users Flag AI Slop in 2 Weeks Amid Bot Rise

LinkedIn aims to enhance user experience and retain its audience amidst concerns about an influx of AI-generated content. To address this, Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan recently announced the introduction of a new feature—a “seems like AI slop” button.

This initiative reflects LinkedIn's commitment to maintaining quality content on its platform while navigating the challenges posed by artificial intelligence in content creation.

AI slop describes poorly generated content produced by artificial intelligence. To address this issue, LinkedIn has introduced a feature that enables users to flag posts they suspect are AI-generated.

LinkedIn Cuts Automated AI Bot Engagement

The button launched on LinkedIn has gained significant traction, with over a million users engaging with it within the first two weeks. Srinivasan noted in a LinkedIn post that there has been a 40% reduction in views of content classified as “AI slop.”

He acknowledged the improvements but emphasised the need for continued efforts to ensure that LinkedIn remains a platform for authentic interactions and perspectives.

The “dead Internet theory,” which holds that a large portion of what consumers see online is no longer created by real people for real people, is something LinkedIn is attempting to avoid. According to the notion, bots, posts created by artificial intelligence, phoney accounts, and automated interaction will become more prevalent on the Internet.

To put it another way, machines efficiently publish, like, comment on, and promote one another, resulting in the majority of material on the Internet being AI-generated.

As AI bots and agents proliferate online, the theory has acquired.

Notably, an analyst at PitchBook specialising in enterprise and retail fintech, Rudy Yang, indicated to Fortune that although there are significant gaps in the available information, the data observed consistently points to an increase in bot activity. He highlighted that this surge in browser activity is primarily influenced by agentic AI-driven interactions.

The Use of AI Content Is on the Rise

The concept that AI is taking over the web is supported by data. In April, cloud platform Cloudflare said that automated traffic had surpassed human traffic on the Internet for the first time. According to Cloudflare, as of Wednesday, 58% of search requests came from bots and 42% from humans.

Additionally, AI-written content is becoming more prevalent online. Researchers looked at 10,000 webpages collected in July and discovered that 10% of them had strong evidence of AI authorship, up from about 2% five years prior, according to a Pew Research Centre report published this week.

Further, the analysis revealed that since ChatGPT's late 2022 launch, more than one-third of webpages had at least some indication of AI-generated content.

The change seems to be particularly vulnerable on LinkedIn. According to a July analysis by AI-detection startup Pangram, the professional networking site has a higher percentage of AI-generated long-form articles than Medium, X, or Substack. The platform is utilised by over 1.3 billion registered users to follow businesses, industries, and workplace news.

Eventually, over 40% of LinkedIn's long-form posts were categorised by Pangram as completely AI-generated.

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