It seems that LinkedIn doesn’t plan on stopping at adding AI-generated profile summaries and job descriptions, with the world’s largest professional social network now also experimenting with generative AI feed posts, via suggestions within the post composer.
Link Prompts
As seen in this example shared by app researcher Nima Owji, LinkedIn’s in-development AI update assistant would prompt you to ‘share your ideas’ with the system to then get suggestions for a first draft of a LinkedIn post. On paper, that probably doesn’t sound too great, especially when one of the example suggestions is ‘opinion about a new trend’. In other words, the generative AI tools would generate that opinion for you, which seems like a pathway to more crud in the LinkedIn Feed.
This is something LinkedIn is already known for, as wannabe entrepreneurs share their ‘hustle culture’ advice, inspired by Gary Vaynerchuck’s bravado, but with nowhere near the charisma or presence of one of the web’s toughest business leaders. Social Media’s performative allure, which sees people only posting the highlights of their life, is maybe the worst on LinkedIn, where some members try to present their best professional selves, which often involves comically bad advice about how to get ahead, how to impress your boss, and even how to slay the competition.
It’s hard to imagine that a generative AI tool is going to facilitate much improvement on this front, and if everyone starts posting AI-generated opinions, then what’s the point? When it does come to that, there will no longer be real people sharing actual insight in the app. If people just post commentary spat out by some machine, then how does that help provide a better perspective on who they are, what they know, and what they bring to the business table?
One potential counter to this is that they’re likely to do this anyway, with ChatGPT already pumping Social Media post suggestions based on user prompts. Integrating these elements directly into LinkedIn, though, still seems more defeatist. Then again, LinkedIn’s parent company Microsoft is working to wedge generative AI into all of its apps, as it looks to ride the early wave, which has so far brought it a tidal wave of attention, even going as far as to revitalize its Bing search engine.
The Wrap
It seems likelier that more of these types of tools are coming, whether or not we like them. That will eventually lead to a lot of bots talking to other bots, while real humans watch on and giggle as they engage in the new trend of duping each other. For a place like LinkedIn, while this is the new trend, it just sounds too counterintuitive – you’d think that they’d want people to be sharing what they know, about their real experiences, as opposed to just outsourcing AI-created ideas. Job interviews are about to get real interesting.
Sources