LinkedIn Experiments with Generative AI Prompts for Posts

Seems that LinkedIn is not stopping at adding AI-generated profile summaries and job descriptions, with the professional social network now also experimenting with generative AI feed posts, via suggestions within the composer.

As you can see 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.

Which seems probably not 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 bs in the LinkedIn feed.

Which LinkedIn is already known for, as wannabe entrepreneurs share their ‘hustle culture’ advice, inspired by the bravado of Gary Vaynerchuk, but with nowhere the charisma or presence of the tough talking business leader. The performative allure of social media, 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 comedically bad advice about how to get ahead, how to impress your boss, and how to slay the competition.

I can’t 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, as it’ll no longer be real people sharing their actual insight in the app.

If people are just posting commentary spat out by a machine, then how does that help to provide a better perspective on who they are, what they know, and what they can bring to a business relationship?

I guess, the counter to this would be that they’re likely going to do this anyway, with ChatGPT already able to pump out social media post suggestions based on your prompts.

Integrating it directly into LinkedIn, however, still seems more defeatist – but 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 thus far brought it a heap of attention, and even made its Bing search engine relevant again.

It seems likely that more of these types of tools are coming, whether we like it or not. Which will eventually lead to a lot of bots talking to other bots, while the actual people watching on giggle at duping each other.

I don’t know, doesn’t seem like a great idea – it seems like you really want people to be sharing what they know, about their real experiences, as opposed to outsourcing their thinking to AI.

Should make for some interesting job interviews either way.