LinkedIn rolls out an AI slop detector as Pangram data shows 41% of long-form posts may be AI-generated. Plus, librarians are running "Avoiding AI" workshops to help people reclaim control over their tech. Hosts Ashley Coffey and Daniel Hill break down what it means for your feed, your content strategy, and your privacy.
This week on AI News You Should Know About, Ashley Coffey and Daniel Hill cover LinkedIn's new AI slop detection button and the classifiers behind it, plus a growing trend of librarians teaching "AI avoidance" workshops for people overwhelmed by AI creeping into their everyday tech. The hosts also share two practical tricks: a Google search modifier that removes AI-generated results, and a LinkedIn URL hack that surfaces the newest job postings first.
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Daniel Hill (00:04)
Hi, welcome back to AI news you should know about for July thirty first. I'm your host, Ashley Coffey.
Ashley Coffey (00:09)
And I'm Daniel Hill. There's a lot of AI news out there, and we give you what you need right now.
Ashley Coffey (00:14)
This week on the show, we'll be talking about LinkedIn introduces a Seems Like AI slot button. And librarians are hosting viral avoiding AI workshops for people who are fed up with big tech. We'll be covering all of that on our show today, but first, here's a quick word from our sponsors.
Ashley Coffey (00:32)
Welcome back. Let's dive in. All right. LinkedIn introduces a seems like AI slot button. This is coming from 404 Media, one of my favorite outlets. We know how painful it is to read through LinkedIn posts that were clearly generated by AI. The single-line sentences, the excessive use of emojis, the X is not Y sentence structure that's really popular. The signals are stronger than ever, and platforms are losing out on engagement because users are ignoring AI-generated content.
Ashley Coffey (01:01)
When ChatGPT entered the market in November 30th of 2022, you could start to see a shift in content on LinkedIn with the introduction of AI and the growth and expansion. But for the most part, people were still writing their own posts. But you know, fast forward into 2026, where we are now, there's an AI flavor for almost everything under the sun. And the ability for users to generate length, con lengthy content from for AI posts is really high.
Ashley Coffey (01:26)
So with democratized access to AI, the increase in AI slot unfolds as we've seen. here's the news. Earlier this month, 404 media reported that AI detection service Pangram estimated 41% of long form posts and 30% of short form posts on LinkedIn are likely generated by AI, and people are hungry for real human content.
Ashley Coffey (01:49)
Hari Srinvasin, Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn, wrote their own post about the button on LinkedIn. Quote, AI Slop is a top priority for all of us. We really care about this. People come to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas, and expertise. Here are a few more changes to keep it that way, he wrote. And the button, in part, will help LinkedIn tune its own models for identifying AI slop.
Ashley Coffey (02:15)
Quote, we are ramping up a series of new and improved classifiers that identify if a post is AI slop or generally low content, low quality content. This will reduce the amount of AI slop you might see in suggested content and from outside your network. I like this. What are your thoughts, Daniel?
Daniel Hill (02:32)
I like it too, but I'm curious of what the definition around AI slop is. The article that you linked to included a pretty good definition of some of the things that typically identifies AI generated posts. So for instance, if it says X is not Y, and like framing a sentence that way, that's a good indication. Having a list of takeaways, extra spaces between single sentences and so forth. I would say that some of that.
Daniel Hill (02:56)
Yes, is AI slop, but some of it is just some people write that way. So if you used AI to make a post, that doesn't necessarily mean it's AI slop, but it certainly could be. And I'm interested in that kind of delineation. I think on other platforms you can say not interested, right? But to give that specific identifier of I think this is AI slop, I think LinkedIn here is kind of playing the long game to say, okay, now that we know what people generally think is AI slop, let's start suggesting things that indicate it's not AI slop.
Daniel Hill (03:25)
interested to see how LinkedIn uses this data and how it informs future creation of content on LinkedIn.
Ashley Coffey (03:31)
Yes, and I wanna hone in on this piece right here. We actively work to reduce low quality automated or generic content. So I want to know how they're defining low quality as well. And let's not forget that some of these tools have metadata thumbprints that will signal to other tools that you're using AI. Like if you generate an image in ChatGPT Images 2.0 and try to upload it to Facebook, it's gonna automatically flag it as AI because there's a thumbprint in there. So
Ashley Coffey (03:58)
curious what signals come out of this. All right. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll be talking about librarians are hosting viral avoiding AI workshop for people who are fed up with big tech.
Daniel Hill (04:13)
Welcome back. Continuing with our stories, the next one has to do with librarians hosting AI avoidance workshops because some people are fed up with big tech. By way of background, not everyone loves AI and the way that it's crept into so many of our online experiences. However, turning it off can often be a multi step process that's different for every app or website that you use. Here's the news Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia.
Daniel Hill (04:38)
Teaches a workshop called Avoiding AI. He says, quote, I was inspired by the feeling of people's frustration with AI tools being kind of forced onto them and feeling like AI tools we didn't ask for are suddenly everywhere in our lives. End quote. The workshop is an hour long and it's an overview of how AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools work, explaining why people might want to use the products and why they might choose to abstain.
Daniel Hill (05:05)
Then he walks through all of the most popular tech platforms and devices with step by step instructions to guide people to turning off specific features. Interestingly, he said that it's something he considers as quote, advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools. End quote. And I think this is a really great concept because.
Daniel Hill (05:29)
There might be some things you like about AI, but there might be some experiences where you don't want AI involved. You don't want your data scraped and used in that way. And if you can turn it off, that's your choice. You might want to. Ashley, what are your thoughts?
Ashley Coffey (05:41)
I'm so glad you picked this one because I love it. Bravo to Charlie Bailey for taking the initiative to put this together. But I think the key thing is he's creating a mechanism for people to have choice in the first place. Like they don't know what they don't know. So I love the aspect of digital literacy here, which is so needed across the US, especially. There's very little digital literacy. If you think about it, like I had a typing class, I don't think they offer typing classes anymore in school.
Ashley Coffey (06:09)
but yes, this is a really good way to help empower people to one have a better understanding of how AI is integrated into their tools, but have the choice to use it or not use it if they want to do so. But we'll see what happens. I'm curious if this is going to like take off with other libraries across the US. Is like is this is he building this as something that people can take and facilitate in their own libraries? We'll see.
Daniel Hill (06:33)
So he got it from someone who is a librarian in Maine who made a journal article about developing her own workshop. People asked for the slides. He was one of the people who asked for the slides. The woman said in the article that she is getting inundated with requests for her slides. And it made me think: could that be
Ashley Coffey (06:52)
Wow.
Daniel Hill (06:52)
something that I offer to my own local library as a class? And I think it's interesting because if this conversation was happening a year ago, you and I would say, hey,
Daniel Hill (07:00)
We should do classes for people who are not as tech savvy, who want to learn AI, but now it's the reverse. Let's do classes for people who are not so tech savvy who do not want AI. And I think that's just such a dichotomy of how I would have thought about this 12 months ago. And I love this idea.
Ashley Coffey (07:16)
Thank you so much for bringing this up. And I love that you linked to the publication, refusal as instruction, equipping patrons to resist AI, data brokers, big tech, and more. We'll put that in the show notes. That way, if anyone wants to read it, you can. But I don't I don't doubt that that that person's being inundated with requests. That just shows a huge signal that people want more of this.
Daniel Hill (07:36)
Yeah, the article is great, by the way. We'll link to it in the show notes. It even has the tip, which I didn't know. If you add this string I'm about to say to the end of a Google search link, it hides all the AI results. So if you search for something on Google and then you type ampersand UDM equals 14, it hides all the AI results from the search. Now that's just a little 10-second tidbit. I didn't know that, but this is the kind of thing that people are learning in these classes. I think it's really smart.
Ashley Coffey (08:03)
Yes, I actually saw this today. someone had a hack, which would make sense. If you go into the URL on like on LinkedIn, like you see job posts and whatnot. If you go to the URL, it'll have 8,600 in the URL and that's as many seconds as there are in a day. So if you
Daniel Hill (08:19)
Right. Right.
Ashley Coffey (08:20)
change it to like 3600, it'll show you the job postings within the last hour instead of the last 24 hours. So you're the first person to see it. And I was like, that that makes sense.
Daniel Hill (08:30)
Little tips like that sometimes are just completely I hate to use the word game changer because I feel that's overused, but they really help you to think about things in a different perspective or do something you couldn't do before.
Ashley Coffey (08:39)
And this is why like the beauty of technology and having a foundational understanding of it gives you such a competitive advantage in the world of AI, because you're able to pull from little tidbits like that.
Daniel Hill (08:49)
Hmm, yeah. That is it for our AI news you should know about this week. You can find links to everything we've discussed in the show notes. And please, we'd love to hear from you and get your feedback on how we can make the show better. You can find me on Instagram, threads, and YouTube at Daniel Hill Media.
Ashley Coffey (09:03)
We love hearing from you, our audience. This is why we do this. And if you like the show, send us a DM. Let us know when you're listening to it. Is it on your walk? Is it during your lunch break? That way we can tailor our show to meet your needs. And if you want more tech talk, you can find me on Instagram at Ashley RCoffee89. That's A S-H-L-E-Y-C-O-F-F-E-Y 89, where you can sign up for my monthly AI newsletter that's free that gives you tips and tricks on how to make the most out of your AI.
Daniel Hill (09:31)
Thank you for listening and come back next time for more AI news you should know about.