LinkedIn has introduced a new reporting option for posts and comments that users believe “seem like AI slop”, as Microsoft responds to the growing flood of machine-generated professional content on the platform.
Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016. The professional network has increasingly become a place for users to publish polished but often formulaic business posts, including emotionally framed personal stories followed by lessons about sales, leadership or workplace success.
The new flag gives members an alternative to reporting questionable material as ordinary spam. Its arrival follows a claim from AI-detection company Pangram that more than 40 per cent of long-form LinkedIn posts are AI-generated. Pangram has faced criticism of its own, but the finding highlighted a problem that has become difficult for users to ignore.
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LinkedIn wants feedback on AI-generated content
LinkedIn chief product officer Hari Srinivasan described AI-generated content as “a top priority for all of us” in a post. He said the company wants members to identify posts and comments that appear to be AI slop so its systems can be adjusted and feeds improved.
That task is complicated by the lack of a fixed definition. Srinivasan said the meaning of “slop” changes, making user reports useful for refining LinkedIn’s models rather than serving as a final judgement on every post.
The change also follows criticism of LinkedIn’s own writing tools. The platform previously offered an “enhance your post” option, which could rewrite a member’s words. LinkedIn is removing that feature and replacing it with a proofreading tool intended to correct writing without changing the author’s voice.
“We’re taking this learning, removing the ‘enhance your post’ feature you see when you write a post or message and replacing it with a feature that proofreads your words, but does not change your voice,” Srinivasan wrote.
Microsoft’s AI spending adds another layer
LinkedIn’s attempt to reduce low-quality AI content comes as Microsoft reports strong financial results and continues investing heavily in the infrastructure behind the technology. The company reported $35.8 billion in profit for the quarter after committing $41 billion to capital investments, including data-centre expansion for AI services.
The contrast is notable: Microsoft is spending billions to expand AI capacity while one of its major platforms is trying to limit the unwanted material that generative tools can produce. Similar concerns are appearing across the wider internet, where automated content can make it harder to separate useful information from polished filler.
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Satya Nadella calls for a new balance
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella addressed the broader issue in January. He argued that the debate should move beyond a simple choice between “slop” and sophistication, and instead consider how people relate to one another while using AI as a cognitive tool.
“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our ‘theory of the mind’ that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other,” Nadella wrote. “This is the product design question we need to debate and answer.”
For now, LinkedIn’s response is practical rather than philosophical: give users a way to flag suspicious content, collect more feedback and make its writing assistance less intrusive. Whether that is enough to make the professional network feel more human remains to be seen.
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