How to stand out in a world of AI slop
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In late July, everyone opened up LinkedIn in horror (or delight, depending on who you are) to the new AI slop button: a reporting function that allows you to flag whether someone’s post seems like “AI slop”. Was this the beginning of the end to the oversaturation of AI copy across social media, or a well-intentioned, yet surface level, fix?
In recent weeks, the new update has been debated. On the pro side, and no doubt the reasoning behind LinkedIn's decision, perhaps this new feature would encourage more LinkedIn posters to take the time to put their ideas into their own words, and therefore increase the originality of thought across the platform as a whole.
On the other hand, there are some solid rebuttals as to why this isn’t an easy fix. Starting with what “AI slop” actually means, LinkedIn's chief product officer Hari Srinivasan noted that "slop is hard to define and the definition changes”, which already creates confusion. With no clear rule in place, LinkedIn users are effectively left to police themselves, contributing to somewhat of a witch hunt around what’s AI and what’s not.
The other solid opposition to the feature is that AI has dramatically changed how we speak, meaning we ourselves sound more like AI every day through consuming so much of it – a “linguistic hall of mirrors”. This makes it harder to tell the difference between AI language and normal rhetoric, resulting in more false positives across AI detection sites, and widespread paranoia that even our natural language will be circled in red pen through no fault of our own. Similarly, what used to be normal language and punctuation has turned into no-gos for anyone endeavouring to sound human online. “It’s not X, it’s Y” and the infamous em dash are blacklisted today, despite this kind of phrasing having been used in literature throughout history.
In the PR world, we’re no stranger to seeing explicit requests from journalists for non-AI generated copy, who are sick of being sent waffle from so-called experts. However, what’s important to note is that their gripe is not so much with the language or grammar used as it is the content.
As Anna Moloney stated in her recent complaint about AI slop in City AM, it’s “less the em dashes than just the banal genericism. The feeling that anyone could have written this, because anybody could have.”
One thing about AI is it can chat a lot about a whole lot of nothing, which is why we’ve developed the habit of eye rolling at LinkedIn posts that hit 10 buzz words without saying anything you could reasonably explain to a third party. Whenever I have an article idea that objectively has no legs, ChatGPT will hail me a genius, when any human with some semblance of critical thinking skills would send me back to the drawing board.
I guess the takeaway is not to worry so much about whether or not you’ve used the word “delve” too many times in your commentary and micromanaging your natural language, and more about telling authentically interesting stories. What new perspectives can you offer to the space? An experience unique to you? A hot take? Passion and personality go a long way. Someone straight talking about their real-life experiences, anecdotes and personal opinions will never fail to be more interesting than even perfectly worded nonsense.
As an account executive at Eleven Hundred Agency, I have the pleasure of speaking with and learning from genuine experts who live and breathe their subject areas and can eloquently explain them in fascinating depth. However, there are plenty of other tech experts who understand their fields inside out but sometimes find it tricky to put their thoughts down in writing. Seeking some assistance from AI maybe tempting, but the emergence of LinkedIn’s new feature, not to mention the general backlash against AI-generated commentary, should make them think twice.
Here’s where a good PR agency can make the difference, by helping an expert express their opinions in a way that’s substantive and compelling, but without losing their authentic voice.
While the AI slop button is a great update in theory, the issue with AI generated language goes way beyond surface level sentence structure and punctuation. It’s about underselling what exactly makes you and your brand outstanding to an audience.