AI Comments on LinkedIn: Endless "Slop"
Make it stop!
In the span of one week, I received the following two comments on my LinkedIn posts:
Exhibit A:
"Your journey is a testament to resilience and adaptability, showcasing significant growth and success. Looking ahead to 2025, consider leveraging your unique skills and experiences to explore new markets. Strengthen your personal brand through thought leadership and strategic networking. Opportunities abound for those who remain curious and proactive. Keep inspiring others."
Exhibit B:
"Congratulations on your incredible journey! Your resilience and determination are truly inspiring. It's amazing to see how you've navigated through such significant changes and emerged stronger each year. I'm excited to see what 2025 holds for you and your thriving business. Wishing you continued success and growth in the coming year!"
The comments were clearly generated by AI. One profile looked like an absolute bot. The other looked like someone who was just using AI to beef up their speed of engagement by leaving AI comments everywhere.
The AI comments are everywhere and increasing exponentially. I've started blocking profiles that leave AI-generated comments, because once they start, they don't stop. I'll get constant notifications (especially when the comment tags me).
I have been relying on LinkedIn for years as a way to build an audience and reach potential clients. I still believe in the power of the platform — the reach is far better than other social media sites. But if LinkedIn doesn't get the AI comments under control, it's going to devolve into something unusable.
AI-generated comments are killing genuine connections
Suffice it to say, everyone has noticed. LinkedIn trainer and advisor Richard van der Blom was recently part of a group invited to a group to discuss what's happening behind the scenes at LinkedIn. He shared:
One of the biggest frustrations [of the group] was the rise of AI-generated comments—sometimes insightful, often generic, and increasingly everywhere. We all saw an increase since LinkedIn suggested AI to write comments. Many believe they dilute real engagement, making it harder to identify valuable conversations.
I've long suggested to people — such as fellow freelancers and solopreneurs — that they use comments to build a presence on LinkedIn without feeling cringe. It's a way to connect with people and comments can be expanded into future social posts.
While that strategy works, for the time being, it's getting harder to recommend. Because I know everyone who relies on LinkedIn for genuine connections is fighting the same battle against AI-generated comments.
Anna Burgess Yang
AI slop makes LinkedIn decidedly worse
This isn't the first time LinkedIn has pushed AI "slop." About a year ago, I wrote about LinkedIn's "Takeways" feature — an AI-generated summary that would appear below posts in the feed. I never understood the purpose, since most posts are a few hundred words, max. No one asked for an AI-generated "takeaway" that would summarize the post into one or two sentences, while also stripping it of any personality.
It also made the user experience much, much worse. There was no way to turn off Takeaways, so I was annoyed every time I looked at my feed. LinkedIn has since removed Takeaways from the platform.
But why add it at all? In The Anti-SNARF Manifesto, BuzzFeed Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti offers the following:
These deep learning AIs are designed to maximize the time we all spend on these apps. It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI to maximize usage the result is a service that incentivizes content that maximizes addictiveness
LinkedIn probably hopes that AI-generated comments lead more people to stay on the platform, responding to comments. But LinkedIn isn't realizing how annoyed people are. Not all engagement is good engagement. It's a poor user experience to spend time every day blocking profiles just so I don't have to see AI comments anymore.
It's harder to cut through the noise
The other half of the equation is people creating AI comments. If you Google "AI comments for LinkedIn" you can find all kinds of AI post generators that promise the following:
- "Get the attention of your prospects on LinkedIn!"
- "Engage with a high volume of posts!"
- "Comment automatically on LinkedIn posts that contain specific keywords!"
- "AI-driven automated comments for 150 prospects per day!"
If the people using these tools think other people can't tell, they're sorely mistaken.
I can always tell. Plus, it's easy to confirm by looking at the person's profile. I can see that they leave comments at a rate of 1-2 per minute. Not possible for human writing.
Why anyone believes that quantity matters over quality is beyond me. The comments aren't thoughtful or insightful in any way. We were annoyed by spam decades ago, and now AI slop has entered the arena.
Personal branding expert Lara Acosta was a guest on the Creator Science podcast. She said that she only posts a few times per week:
I wanted to prioritize quality over quantity. I want to create this good expereince for my reader — that they actually enjoy the content and that it doesn't feel like I just wrote it to post. I feel like if you're disrespecting your audience with a shitty piece of content, they're not going to come back.
AI-generated comments are disrespectful to the people trying to use LinkedIn as a networking platform. It's getting harder to cut through the noise. I get so many notifications from AI-generated comments that it's harder to see the good ones. Forming connections and starting meaningful conversations on LinkedIn is harder as a result.
I use AI tools myself — they have a lot of really good use cases. I even use AI to repurpose my own social posts — tweaking them from one platform (LinkedIn) so they match the style/vibe of another platform (like Threads). But I still always, always edit the output. AI is a tool, not a destination. People using AI to generate comments have missed that memo.
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