If you’ve spent more than five minutes on LinkedIn recently, I can almost guarantee that you’ve stumbled across a post that goes a little something like this: “Three years ago I failed an interview” and by the end of it, the writer has somehow built a seven figure company and learnt everything they needed to know about leadership by spilling coffee on themselves before a client meeting.
Whether those stories are written by AI or not, they all have one thing in common: they can start to sound strangely familiar.
We’ve all seen them. You scroll past three in a row and realise they look and sound almost identical. The same weird line breaks, the same motivation emojis, the same over-the-top story structure. Working in marketing, I look at feeds every day, and it feels like we’re losing the human touch in the stuff we post.
And it turns out LinkedIn itself has had enough. They’re now testing a feature that allows their users to flag posts directly with a button that reads “Seems like AI slop”.
It definitely seems like people are getting tired of reading posts that look like they were generated by AI in five seconds, but for marketers, founders and startups trying to get noticed online, this raises a bigger question. Could just sounding like a normal, authentic person become our biggest advantage?
When Did LinkedIn Start Sounding So Familiar?
The word “slop” sounds harsh, but I can see why people are using it. Since generative AI became part of everyone’s daily workflow, LinkedIn has started filling up with posts that can feel all too similar. The same storytelling, the same polished language and somehow, the same life lesson at the end.
Research from Pangram estimates that around 41% of long-form LinkedIn posts show signs of AI-generated writing, which probably explains why more people are starting to notice it.
As someone who’s only just starting out in marketing, it’s something I think about quite a bit. AI is great for brainstorming ideas or playing with concepts and ideas, but when everyone’s using the same prompts, the content can start to lose what makes it interesting in the first place. A brand’s personality is what makes people remember it, and that’s much harder to build if every post sounds like it came from the same chatbot.
That’s what makes LinkedIn’s new “Seems like AI slop” button so interesting. Instead of simply adding more AI features, the platform is now asking users to flag content they think feels overly automated or repetitive. LinkedIn has also replaced its AI-powered “Enhance post” feature with a proofreading tool, suggesting they’re rethinking how AI should fit into professional communication.
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The Real Cost Of Saving Time
Look, we all know why people turn to AI tools. Small marketing teams and startups are constantly under pressure to post every single day and stay visible. So, when you have 10 items on your to-do list, letting AI draft your posts in 10 seconds feels like an easy shortcut.
But in my opinion, it seems like a terrible long-term strategy. For some brands, AI can become a shortcut, but the challenge is making sure speed doesn’t come at the expense of originality or trust.
LinkedIn’s new crowdsourced reporting button makes using AI even riskier. Because regular users now decide what counts as “slop”, brands that rely on AI copy risk getting flagged, suppressed and quietly muted by their own target audience. As some have starting highlighting in both LinkedIn posts and recent reporting on the “AI slop” issue, the real question is whether users can spot fake posts without flagging clean human posts by mistake. The hope is that if you’re putting out real, original content instead of automated filler, you shouldn’t have to worry about looking like a bot in the first place.
Why Keeping It Real Is Working Better Now
If there are any positives here, it’s that raw, honest storytelling is making a serious comeback. People don’t want another 10-step guide made by a chatbot; they want to hear about real experiences from people who are actually doing the work.
We’re seeing this across all social media platforms. When everyone has access to the same AI tools, the content that gets attention isn’t the most perfect post; it’s the most real and raw one. Startups that rely completely on automation might need to slow down and change things up a bit. Platforms everywhere are pushing for more transparency around automated content, so trying to hide AI writing is getting riskier by the day.
Ultimately, LinkedIn’s new reporting feature isn’t just a small change; it’s a clear signal to businesses and creators. The days of spamming feeds with generic, corporate posts just to get easy views are coming to an end.
We’ll have to wait and see if user flagging actually fixes our feeds or just creates new problems, but one thing’s for sure: in a feed full of AI-written posts, just sounding like a real human being might just be the best marketing strategy.
