Almost Half Of All LinkedIn Posts Are Now AI-Written Research Shows

Pangram Labs, an the AI-detection platform, in a recent research report revealed that it found that over 40% long posts on social networking platform LinkedIn were entirely AI-generated. "LinkedIn was the most AI-saturated platform, where more than 40% of longform posts flagged as fully AI-generated," it said.

Many users are now put off by LinkedIn posts, primarily because they all read eerily similar in terms of language and construction. It's no secret that AI chatbots are the culprit producing predictable "slop," and the data from Pangram does not honestly come as a surprise. Incidentally, in December last year, Merriam-Webster declared 'slop' as its word of the year defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,"

Outspoken billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has called the platform "unbearably cringe." Musk even said he "instantly loses respect for anyone who posts on LinkedIn." 

"Our data shows that AI-generated content is a problem across all platforms, and it is hitting longform content especially hard," the New York-based startup co-founded by Stanford engineers Max Shapiro and Bradley Emi, said. Pangram Labs was founded in 2023 to mitigate new issues caused by the proliferation of powerful generative AI models such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Ironically, Pangram Labs uses an AI-based system to detect AI-generated text and thus it's important to note that AI detection tools just like any other form of AI can make mistakes. However, there's no reason to suspect the recent study is not on the money because the AI slop flooding theinternet is pretty obvious to most, with some typical tells such as  -'It's not X. It's Y." - style of writing. 

"Every post was analyzed with Pangram 3.3, our latest AI detection model, which achieves a 0.01% false positive rate," the startup said. False positive here refers to human writing eroneously flagged as AI-generated.

Not Just LinkedIn

LinkedIn may have topped the list, but it wasn't the only platform plastered with AI-generated writing. According to Pangram Labs, X had the highest share of posts that involved AI in some form. Nearly half of the long form posts analysed were either entirely AI-generated (23.9%) or written with AI assistance (22.9%), leaving just over half classified as fully human-written.

Even platforms known for thoughtful longform writing weren't immune. More than one in five Substack posts were flagged as either fully AI-generated or AI-assisted, suggesting the trend extends well beyond traditional social media. Pangram said this mirrors the growing presence of AI-written content across the internet, including in newspaper opinion pieces.

Also read: The Curious Case Of An Award-Winning Story That Is Likely AI-Written

However, LinkedIn's contribution to AI-written content clearly outsized others. Although LinkedIn posts accounted for roughly a third of all the content analysed, they made up nearly two-thirds (62%) of everything Pangram flagged as AI-generated.
LinkedIn also encourages AI use on its platform in several ways, including a built-in "Write with AI" button (now rebranded "Enhance post," but still offering AI writing assistance), Pangram pointed out. 

"People are noticing LinkedIn's growing reputation for slop - perhaps to combat it, an executive at LinkedIn recently announced that the platform would be detecting and downranking AI-generated posts using an in-house algorithm."

In an ironic and comic twist of events, the announcement itself was AI-generated, the startup highlighted.

"Whether or not the company is attempting to modulate AI in their feed, our users are still seeing a lot of AI writing on LinkedIn," Pangram noted.