AI-generated writing is now everywhere on the internet. Sometimes the introduction of automated prose can change the character of a site weblike when once-loved publications are purchased and transformed into AI content factories. Other times, however, it’s harder to argue that AI has actually changed anything. Let’s think, for example, of LinkedIn.
The Microsoft-owned social network for business professionals has embraced AI and even offers LinkedIn Premium subscribers access to its own AI writing tools that can “rewrite” posts, profiles and direct messages. The initiative appears to be working: According to a new analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by AI detection startup Originality AI, more than 54% of the longest English-language posts on LinkedIn are likely generated by AI. It’s just that the corporate style of AI language on the platform can be difficult to distinguish from the real thing. Thought Leader Blogging written by humans.
Originality scanned a sample of 8,795 public LinkedIn posts of more than 100 words published between January 2018 and October 2024. For the first few years, the use of AI writing tools on LinkedIn was negligible. A major surge followed in early 2023. “The spike came when ChatGPT came out,” says Jon Gillham, CEO of Originality. At that time, Originality found that the number of AI-generated posts had skyrocketed by 189%; it has since stabilized.
LinkedIn says it doesn’t track how many posts on the site are written or edited with AI tools, “but we have strong defenses to proactively identify exact or near-exact duplicate, low-quality content. When we detect this type of content “We take steps to ensure it is not widely promoted,” says Adam Walkiewicz, Head of Feed Relevance at LinkedIn. “We see AI as a tool that can help revise a draft or overcome the blank page problem, but what matters are the original thoughts and ideas that our members share.”
LinkedIn is for finding a new job and keeping in touch with old coworkers, which means it’s a relatively boring social media platform. But in recent years it has developed its own network of influencers and is surprisingly popular among Generation Z, including teenagers. Like everywhere else on the Internet, people are also hungry for attention on LinkedIn, and startups have realized that there is money to be made by helping people grow their audience. There’s a cottage industry of LinkedIn post and comment generators that help professionals produce content to dazzle potential bosses or clients. Instead of spending four minutes searching for the right tone to congratulate a former colleague on their promotion, it now takes four seconds to conjure up an algorithmically generated compliment.
However, LinkedIn users who have spoken to WIRED say they rely more on large, general-purpose language models to cobble together their LinkedIn posts than on specialized AI tools. Adetayo Sogbesan, a content writer, says she uses Anthropic’s Claude to draft the posts she creates for tech clients. “Of course, there’s a lot of editing afterwards,” he says, but the chatbot “helps me save a lot of time.”
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