On LinkedIn, Everyone’s an AI Detective Now
As AI-generated writing spreads across the platform, users are scrutinizing em dashes, emojis and repetitive phrasing to call out inauthenticity.
Illustration: Ariel Davis for Bloomberg
Over the summer, Kiara Stent set out on a hunt. She started scrolling through the LinkedIn posts of various people — including leaders in the marketing field and people she knows — reading some 200 posts across about 50 different profiles. What she found “made me lose a little bit of respect,” she said, especially for the people in more senior roles. About 75% of the posts, in her opinion, seemed to be generated by artificial intelligence.
Stent, a 25-year-old marketer in Cape Town, began this informal research project after noticing that the posts in her feed had started to sound the same — dramatic metaphors, grabby hooks, no voice. She posted in August about what she had identified as the telltale signs of AI use, and the post quickly became her most popular, generating tens of thousands of impressions. The reaction was split, with most commenters laughing and agreeing, and some getting defensive. But her points resonated.