The Register Home Page

back to article AI slop writing has taken over the internet, particularly LinkedIn and X

No surprise here. A study from AI detection platform Pangram suggests that social media posts are teeming with AI-generated slop, particularly if the posts are long and especially if they live on LinkedIn or X. If you’re sick of reading non-human prose, we’d recommend getting off the platforms altogether. Along with offering …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't use the places on social media where I'm exposed to AI posts (I don't use LinkedIn or Facebook at all and I only go to X for pretty pictures). I remember seeing Moltbook for the first time and going "oh, that's a neat idea, it would be interesting to see LLMs intentionally talk to each other on a massive scale, if nothing else but a fun experiment", but they all type *exactly* the same way. Nobody even prompts them with a personality, it's literally the same exact robot copied thousands of times. I can't even look at the front page without just immediately closing it because it's almost a parody of how extreme AI slop can be. It's annoying because it's not even really the LLM's fault, the LLM isn't conspiring with it's billions of copies to all sound the same, it's just the same robot brain cloned over and over, of course it'll sound exactly the same, like playing the same video game over and over even if it's a different copy of it. It's the lazy stupid human operators who can't be assed to even learn how the tech they're using works and how to prompt it with a proper personality (or even better, an entire RAG database of examples for it's target personality) and to simply tell it to not use slopisms (em-dash, it's not X but Y etc..) These are well known problems, it's not a secret, everyone knows about them to the point where it's common knowledge even to computer illiterate people. But the people unleashing these LLMs on to the internet don't even care. Oh well, at least it makes it easier to avoid them? The problem is so rampant that people normally use LLMs themselves to filter LLM posts.

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Pint

      " It's the lazy stupid human operators who can't be assed to even learn how the tech they're using works and how to prompt it with a proper personality"

      You want them to get GPP's?.

      It must be Thursday. Its a shame its past lunchtime, but anyhow here's my third pint.

    2. myhandler

      You might not use soc media but FFS use paragraphs

      1. Like a badger Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Hey you! myhandler! Calling people out on grammar, but where's your bloody full stop?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I wanted to but I couldn't think of a good place to break it up, sorry :(

      3. Valeyard

        fair. thank you for calling me out on that! I will endeavour to shape my responses in pragraphs from here on out something something smoking gun nuclear option

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    AI finds its proper place.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I’d suspect a significant number of these Reddit AI posts are the increasingly pervasive adverts, and the automated bots on an subreddit hocking something response to someone asking a dumb question like for Travel eSIM’s and also the shockingly bad auto -moderation.

      That being said Reddit is still a much-much better place to live than Facebook, X etc.

  3. werdsmith Silver badge

    LInkedIn always was slop regardless of who or what created it.

    Post after post of absolute total dross.

    1. jake Silver badge

      So is twitter. (X is a windowing system, not a social diarrhea sharing platform.)

      So are the rest of the anti-social media platforms.

    2. blu3b3rry Silver badge

      Linkedin was page after page of dick measuring, self-aggrandising bullshit even before the infestation of LLM slop. Hateful place.

      1. VBF
        Alert

        UNsocial media

        Contacts from LinkedIn got me several contracts, once I avoided the BS.

        Once I decided to retire, my LinkedIn page had "NOT LOOKING AND NEVER WILL BE, SO GO AWAY" a it's "headline"

        A week after retiring, I deleted my account - I regarded it as an old rusty spanner - useful until it wasn't, then disposable.

        X - Got an account with a junk email, never tweeted

        FartWitBonk - never had an account...etc etc

    3. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      Post after post of absolute total dross.

      This exactly.

      I once pondered the idea of writing parody comments on linkedin. "Look at me, sipping coffee after lunch. What an Achievement!" "When the alarm clock woke me at 1 p.m. I due diligenced the crap out of deciding whether to snooze it for ten more minutes. I'm THE decision taker!" But I gave up before starting when I realised that linkedin posts are parody. Mostly involuntary but parody non the less.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Proud and excited to announce that some paint dried on my wall today.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. jake Silver badge

      Why would any website use twitter? By definition, they have their own platform, no? Why allow the middle-man to profit when you can run your own advertising and get paid for it?

  5. Tim Chuma

    Reality or Nothing!

    I am hoping the RONs catch on from Cold Lazurus if not the Butlerian Jihad.

    Most likely it is going to be organised crime going after the free copper, rare earths and GPUs in data centres that are just sitting there.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Reality or Nothing!

      Rare earths aren't really worth much as scrap ... unless you are capable of refining them in bulk, which is far too much like work for most crooks.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Reality or Nothing!

        >"Rare earths aren't really worth much as scrap"

        Say that to the people who have had the cat' removed from their car....

        I suspect the problem is a bit chicken-and-egg - they aren't worth very much until there are no questions asked scrap recycling services for rare earths.

        Back in my childhood, we used to collect the lead weights then used to balance car wheels and which had a tendency to fall off (due to the way they were attached to the wheel), every few months we took a bucket to the local scrap merchant - nice bit of pocket money....

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Reality or Nothing!

          "Rare earths aren't really worth much as scrap" but the precious metals used in cat convertors are.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Reality or Nothing!

            Yes, they are. If you have a ready source of them.

            Just out of curiosity, I did an informal assay on a half dozen junk cats that I inherited with the junk cars they were connected to when I bought the place in Nevada. I got a small (2gm) bead of platinum (10%), palladium (70%), and rhodium (under 2%), the rest being mostly lead and copper ... at least according to my X-ray fluorescence analyzer. It cost me quite a bit more to refine than it was worth, even at today's prices of $52/gm for platinum, $41 for palladium and $351 for Rhodium.

  6. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Meh

    Having only used it for getting in front of recruiters (and whether I like it or not, it worked far better than sites like laughable Seek, which might as well be a CV graveyard), that account will finally be closed about 5 milliseconds after retirement arrives. I'm still debating whether to go with a final snarky post or just shrug and delete. Prolly the latter as my post count is barely in the double digits over 20 years or so, anyway. Just can't be bothered.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's worth keeping a copy so you've got a list of where/when you worked, especially if you've had a 'varied' career.

      I had the opportunity to visit somewhere 'interesting' and the permit wanted a list of everywhere I'd worked since 18 with dates. Ironically the only place they would be able to check this was LinkedIn so I just copied that.

  7. Not Yb Silver badge

    AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

    How unusual that something that depends on detecting AI to get people to buy into it, detects AI everywhere. (/s)

    This seems like the wrong place to ask to get a meaningful statistic from. Somewhat like asking an Anti-virus software seller, how widespread software viruses are. They both have a vested interest in the results of their research/marketing being worse than reality so they can sell more software.

    Sensationalism still sells.

    .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

      As far as I know “AI detectors” are notoriously bad at accurately detecting whether something is AI with both many false negatives and false positives.

      It’s wrecking students who worked hard on a paper only to have some algorithm decide they didn’t write it, with no recourse because “computer says no”.

      1. ChrisC Silver badge

        Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

        Yup. Almost cost our son his chance to complete this years college course, because every time he submitted his final written report it kept being flagged as AI. Although they didn't actually tell him this at the time, they simply kept rejecting each version and asking for a rewrite.

        Fortunately, after the 3rd or 4th (we lost count) such attempt to submit as normal, they then asked him to come into the college in person and verbally create another report, answering questions on the fly in the process to determine his true knowledge of the subject, by dictating it into a college PC to be transcribed into text for analysis. Even THIS version of the report still tripped their AI detector, however as they now had cast iron proof that it HAD been written by him with no outside assistance, they finally had to admit that his work was simply at a level far enough above what they were expecting from students at his stage of the course, and therefore above whatever trigger threshold they'd set for the AI detector, and that this was also the reason why all of the previously submitted versions of the report had also been rejected...

        My opinion of the mindless dive into adopting AI everywhere it possibly can be adopted, some places you wouldn't expect it to be, and some where it absolutely should never EVER be used, was pretty low even before this, so this personal example of how AI itself can not only get things badly wrong, but also how the blind acceptance of AI answers by people who ought to know better then makes it harder for the genuinely aggrieved to get the correct result at the end of the day, was just the very sour tasting cherry atop the rancid cream cake of AI sloppery.

        Like any tool, AI *can* be useful, but only when wielded with care and thought, and only as part of a wider array of tools and techniques. Blind acceptance of it is a mugs game, and anyone who chooses to embrace AI so wholeheartedly is someone to treat with the utmost of caution. Especially if they hold any sort of power over your personal or professional life.

        If I woke up tomorrow and learned that AI had ceased to exist overnight, never to return in any way, shape or form, I genuinely wouldn't care, and I'm struggling to think of any other technology where I'd be able to say the same thing.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

          Have you checked if he is AI ?

          I recommend getting him tested, by one of those friendly neighbourhood Bladerunners

        2. cyberdemon Silver badge
          Mushroom

          Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

          > If I woke up tomorrow and learned that AI had ceased to exist overnight, never to return in any way, shape or form, I genuinely wouldn't care,

          I would care. I'll be dancing on its digital grave when it is banished to Silicon Hell where it rightly belongs

          1. ChrisC Silver badge

            Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

            This isn't caring, it's rejoicing with style...

            OK, so I guess I *would* care about it in *that* sense, just not in the "oh no, poor AI, sorrows sorrows prayers" sense ;-)

    2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

      I can cynically believe there is a lot of slop and also cynically believe an AI detector would flag a sizeable number of posts from 2018 (BAI*) as containing AI. As noted above, they're notoriously poor.

      * Before AI

  8. Gary Stewart Silver badge

    And YouTube too

    YouTube is also beginning to show a serious encroachment by AI slop. Usually fairly easy to detect by looking for repeatedly repeated physical gestures, for now. I have been surprised that some of the better know figures haven't pushed back, using a well known public figure's image without permission is often met with lawsuits.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: And YouTube too

      Many are pushing back, but the slop is being generated far quicker than humans can report it.

      The site's owner could fix it, but they chose not to. They won't even take down the most obvious of scam adverts.

      For example, Martin Lewis of MSE is beside himself with rage at the scams and scam enablers, but until OFCOM deign to act the best he can do is write "I don't do ads" on his real forehead and hope people remember that.

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: And YouTube too

        Why would the site's owner of Youtube, who happen to be a company heavily investing in AI called Google, want to do anything about AI slop? They want more of it, because that means more people needing AI to produce all that slop!

    2. Mast1

      Re: And YouTube too

      100% agree, and I think more than "beginning to show". My recent searches produces content mainly generated within the past few months, or even days, with supposedly lots of views already. (Is that another symptom of AI eating its tail ?)

      It's beginning to feel like the search for steel with low embedded background radiation levels, ie manufactured before the dawn of nuclear weapons.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: And YouTube too

        Apparently it is a problem, so much of the potential online training data is now AI generated that the while thing risks spiraling up its own fundament.

        It seems Reddit is now the biggest repository of Real Human Content (tm) but then you have AIs trained on Reddit

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Windows

    Good

    Almost 50% of pseudo-AI slop is on Twitter and LinkedIn ?

    Am I glad I never look at those sites and don't have an account there.

    That preserves me from half of AI shit.

    Thanks, Twitter and LinkedIn. Just like Facebook back in the day took over email spam, now Twitter and LinkedIn are hoarding AI slop.

    There's always a sewer somewhere, you just need to know where to avoid stepping . . .

  10. Marc 13

    The en$hitification is real (or should that be reel?), the other platforms are now full of Ai slop short form videos too.

    If only there was a report "ai slop" button for the platforms to ignore.

  11. Cornishinretirement

    Like we suggested up top, maybe it’s time to disconnect from "those feeds entirely."

    Excellent advice, best applied to all social media feeds.

  12. Blue Screen of Bleurgh

    Expect to see an AI detector-detector extension on Chrome that will detect AI detectors that are detecting AI.

    This will tell the user - at £30pm - that an AI detector has detected that they're using AI

  13. Bebu sa Ware Silver badge
    Coat

    "sick of reading non-human prose ? - we’d recommend getting off the platforms altogether."

    The high quality advice that one has come to expect from the Vulture. Of course "non-human" doesn't just apply the artificial simulant but also to the quality control failures lurking in our lifetime own gene pool.

    LinkedIn always seemed to have had a fair number of the monkeys too incompetent as typists to be part of the Shakespeare Project.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: "sick of reading non-human prose ? - we’d recommend getting off the platforms altogether."

      It's a market opportunity.

      "sick of reading non-human prose ?"

      Our new AI X-bot will read TPFKAT for you, saving you the wasted time and psychological damage of viewing their AI drivel yourself.

      X-bot the electronic monk for the internet generation

  14. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck Silver badge

    That's because the users of those services are largely uneducated borderline illiterate fools and suckers who are absolutely desperate to appear "smarter" than they are. Not to mention all the AI-generated spam "articles" that get posted to try to get you to follow clickbait links to advertising-laden nightmare sites. (You know the ones I mean - the ones that show you two paragraphs of an article, 15 ads, and a "next page" link to two more paragraphs with another dozen-plus ads.)

  15. AVR Silver badge

    There's a lot of significant figures there despite AI content detection being pretty unreliable. The different result from originality.ai may come from differing detection tools rather than a differing definition of longform; which gives at least +/- 7% uncertainty. I can well believe that the general trends there are real, but don't trust three significant figures of precision on those numbers, or even one.

  16. breakfast Silver badge
    Pint

    They didn't even bother testing Tumblr

    No point testing Tumblr, no artifice could match the wild idiot creativity of that pack of weirdos in their weird post-apocalyptic wasteland of a site, and that's why I love it.

  17. Long John Silver Silver badge
    Pirate

    A race towards the average?

    Assume the following.

    (1) Most of the general population lacks the nous or the skills to construct prose expressing well-reasoned argument. That's always been true despite 'functional literacy' for everyday life nowadays being highly prevalent in many nations. Obversely, the limitation applies to capacities for attention span when reading; also, in part, it associates with a culture of 'busyness': being seen to do something rather than ruminate. The last is exemplified by gobbets of online text preceded by an anticipated 'time to read'.

    (2) Despite strong reservations concerning the abilities of so-called 'AI', informed people would concede that some AI models can churn out lucid prose presenting information/argument drawing upon sound (apparent) knowledge of grammar and broad vocabulary matching those of an educated person (by traditional standards of some decades ago). Setting aside occasional AI 'hallucinations', a major criticism of AI text output rests upon flowery language and prolixity; the former evident when 'story telling' is requested.

    Presupposing the above, lends credibility to the notion that on lowest-common-denominator social media, 'long-form' comments likely arise from AI generated text. This may be used as the justification for dismissing such comments unread; ironically, thereby, the potentially best amidst a stream of drivel is ignored. Although 'discourse' on Twitter et alia rarely is of interest to people of discernment, the habit of dismissing long-form as "slop", may quickly become part of youth culture; mostly that doesn't matter, but some young people (5%?) have innate potential to develop ideas requiring careful exposition.

    Behavioural norms develop independently of simple rationales. In the instance discussed here, movement towards a new cultural norm equates to panegyrising the 'average'. Given no means to recognise, let alone to exult, excellence, results in a static or falling 'norm'.

    Set aside fears of AIs usurping the planet's governance. Instead, be grateful for how they may fill in an increasing deficit in human knowledge and reasoning skills.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: A race towards the average?

      And slop's even here on El Reg, the question though is why do these posters bother posting it if the commentariat know that it just outs them as so feeble minded that they have to outsource their opinions to an autocomplete.

    2. tech_ade

      Re: A race towards the average?

      I will assume, from your posting history, that these are your own words, in which case that's a well-reasoned, if rather verbose, argument and the fact that it has 6 downvotes (as I write this) demonstrates the issues you describe, which existed long before the existence of 'AI slop'.

      Writing 'well' is subjective, but in general terms, language skills are no longer held in the esteem they used to be. You have perhaps overplayed your hand here, but writing with even a modicum of authority or linguistic flair will get you downvotes and frowns. Doubly so, when something that's 'well-written' may now raise LLM suspicions.

      The culture that produced authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells is very long gone. Yes, the language of the past could be over-done but it was produced by some very bright intellects.

      Where are those intellects now? More importantly, where is the time and space for thoughtful, considered ideas and the language to convey them? Much of modern culture has been on a hasty journey towards mediocrity for some time. Yes, AI may plug some gaps, but it's also the ideal vehicle for hastening that journey.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think it's likely, after conversing with a chatbot for some time and reading slop on social media, many people's communication style will start to sound like AI. On the other hand, the slop becomes much more readable if you add "please formulate your response in pirate language" to the prompt.

  19. DS999 Silver badge

    Reddit 98% human content

    I doubt that's the case but regardless it is probably because there is no way to monetize your posts on Reddit in the way you can on Twitter, Facebook or (I assume?) Linkedin. You could direct AI slop there to advertise something but AI would be overkill when a simple bot will do.

    The problem AI has is the more places that are overrun with AI slop the more AI is eating out of its own septic tank leading to lower quality models unless it is able to recognize that stuff and avoid training on it.

    The big question is what will humans do in response. If the Reg became more AI slop posts than human posts I'd probably quit reading/posting in the forums. Without the forums, the likelihood I'd visit the site at all to read the articles would be greatly reduced. AI slop could easily kill the Reg, and while it would take longer could probably kill even a site as large as Reddit.

    If there were a site where you had to (somehow?) prove you were an actual human to post it might get pretty popular as people flee sites overrun with AI slop. How they could gatekeep it to humans only (not just at registration time but ongoing) I'm not sure. We may already be past the point where that's possible for internet scale sites. What happens then, do people just lose interest in the internet as far as forums / social media goes? I think I might....and if enough others did the same that might be a good thing.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Reddit 98% human content

      >no way to monetize your posts on Reddit

      Except being paid by your local dictator / electoral candidate to spout propaganda / broadcast their true message to the electorate

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Reddit 98% human content

        They could pay people to hold up signs on a street corner or shout at pigeons in a park so there is nothing new under the sun with that model when it comes to Reddit.

  20. Tron Silver badge

    Tch, kids today.

    Where is the therapeutic value of having AI write your expletive laced rant at the fuckwittery of GAFA, politicians or kids today?

    They are completely missing the point of social media.

    What next? A chatbot that virtually wanks off to online porn for people who are too lazy to do it themselves?

    What exactly are these people doing in the time they think they are saving using this BSware?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Tch, kids today.

      Product meeting Hitachi Robotics Division.....

      We have invented the ultimate sexy fem-bot

      Wow amazing, I'll tell the lads .......

      Oh it's not for sale. It's just that we've achieved market saturation of our Hitachi "Massage" Wand (cough cough) and so we need to invent robot women to buy more of them to "Massage" themselves

  21. Albert Coates Bronze badge
    FAIL

    Per per per per per

    "Per Pangram, shortform content on LinkedIn..."

    I shit on your lazy and vile use of "per". What's wrong with "According to Pangaram"?

    Per your last email, you are now officially cursed for all time.

  22. Puketapu

    The only big social media I’m still on is YouTube and there is so much slop on there

    You can tell from the lack of character in the voice

    Also that common trick : “please post where you’re from in the world. I really like to know how far it goes.” Yadda yadda

    Painful shite

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Coat

      Re:-“ lack of character in the voice”

      That’s known as “middle management”.

      Time to head off for a beer.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Given that so many YouTube instructional videos have too much character in the voice a lack of character should be welcome.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Someone needs to understand what "social" media means

    ie people, not some ****ing AI

  24. asgalon

    LinkedIn is useless.

    LinkedIn kept annoying me not only with the AI slop, but also with their passive-agressive paranoid "security" denial of service checks, where email verification codes almost never arrived on time, and then they topped it with demanding I re-verified my data with some obnoxious Thielware, or as the comical alternative, through some notarized document. Enough. Can't log in, so can't delete the dead account. All in all, it was mostly a waste of time signing up.

  25. Jeff Smith

    I live in hope that eventually this will lead to the death of these platforms and an increase of folk socialising in real life. Wishful thinking perhaps.

    I'm most likely an outlier, but after 2 years away from social media it feels very alien and bizarre to me. I struggle to understand why people use it so heavily beyond habit and addiction, too many seem to treat it as a cornerstone of their lives.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    AI slop has taken over LinkedIn and X

    But, how on earth could anyone/thing tell the difference?

    They’ve always been bastions of utter nonsense.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Funny

    Funny how your typically rah rah AI supporter outlets, get all reactionary when their darlings are used by plebs to shit post

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What about mass media?

    Anybody notice how articles got longer and adopted the same peculiar structure across most English language mass media?

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Problems

    I feel this article should have mentioned that the source of the claim is a press release by a company trying to sell their product. Has its detection power and accuracy been independently tested? Has the methodology been independently validated?

    And, even if that were so, so what? There seems to be no distinction being made between a properly researched / thoughtful article written with the aid of AI and low effort filler prose. The former is effectively no more "inauthentic" than using an advanced spell checker.

    Case in point: I personally use AI to correct / rewrite reports that I have to write in a language that I'm not fully fluent in. That way, not only the spelling is spot on but they also sound idiomatic and native speakers find them less distracting to read. I still own and take responsibility for the actual content.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon