AI-generated writing is now all over the internet. The introduction of automated prose can sometimes change the character of a website, such as when beloved publications are purchased and turned into AI content mills. Other times, however, it's harder to argue that AI has actually changed anything. For example, take a look at LinkedIn.
Microsoft's social media site for business professionals has embraced AI, even offering LinkedIn Premium subscribers access to its own internal AI writing tools that can “rewrite” messages, profiles and direct messages. The initiative appears to be working: More than 54 percent of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-generated, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by AI detection startup Originality AI. It's just that the business style of AI writing on the platform is difficult to distinguish from real human-written Thought Leader Blogging.
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 large increase then took place at the beginning of 2023. “The upswing happened when ChatGPT came out,” said Jon Gillham, CEO of Originality. At that time, Originality found that the number of likely AI-generated messages had increased by 189 percent; it has since leveled off.
LinkedIn says it does not track how many posts on the site are written or edited with AI tools. “But we do have robust defenses in place to proactively identify low quality and exact or near-exact duplicate content. When we detect such content, we take action to ensure it is not promoted broadly,” said Adam Walkiewicz, LinkedIn's head of feed relevance. “We see AI as a tool that can help review a concept or solve the blank page problem, but it's about the original thoughts and ideas that our members share.”
LinkedIn is for finding a new job and keeping in touch with former colleagues, which means it's a relatively stable social media platform. But in recent years it has developed its own network of influencers and is surprisingly popular with Generation Z, including teenagers. On LinkedIn, like everywhere else on the internet, people crave attention, and startups have realized there's money to be made by helping people grow their audiences. There is a cottage industry of AI LinkedIn comment and post generators to help career-oriented people produce content to dazzle potential bosses or potential clients. Instead of spending four minutes puzzling over the right tone to use to congratulate an ex-colleague on his promotion, it now takes four seconds to conjure up an algorithmically generated award instead.
But LinkedIn users who spoke to WIRED say they rely more on generic large language models to cobble together their LinkedIn posts than they do with dedicated AI tools. Content writer Adetayo Sogbesan says she uses Anthropic's Claude to create rough drafts of posts she creates on behalf of clients in the tech industry. “Of course there's a lot of editing afterwards,” she says, but the chatbot “still helps me save a lot of time.”
