AI is coming at us like a freight train and we need to get on board if we don’t want to be left in the dust!
On LinkedIn, AI has been available for Premium members for the better part of two years, mainly for messaging and content creation, but also for Collaborative articles.
But despite LinkedIn being owned by Microsoft, which is part owner of Open Source AI, the creators of ChatGPT, the quality of LinkedIn’s AI is very poor.
The messages it suggests include phrases like, ‘It’s great to connect. How’ve you been?’ This indicates a greater level of knowledge of someone’s health than can reasonably be expected on the back of a simple connection request.
An attempt to create a 300-word post about a published event on LinkedIn, using the link to the event, failed to include the event name, the speakers’ names, and any real detail about it. If the AI can’t manage to collate content previously published on the platform into a useful post that people want to read and isn’t, frankly, a total embarrassment, then what is its point?
Even AI-certified consultant and LinkedIn expert Mary Fain Brandt, who was a guest on our LinkedIn Live last week, admitted she doesn’t use LinkedIn’s AI – a massive indictment on the quality of the platform’s AI capabilities.
LinkedIn’s use of AI in its collaborative articles is little better. Many felt it was using our ‘contributions’ aka comments to train its AI. However, changes coming to this in the next 2 months will likely sound its death knell.
And, until very recently, LinkedIn provided an AI-generated section of questions and prompts underneath our posts which readers could access to find out more. An innovative idea when launched, it was quickly ignored by LinkedIn users, not least because of its inaccuracy.
To access LinkedIn’s AI features, members need to pay. On the basis of the current AI offering, this is hardly likely to inspire potential new Premium members. And given that LinkedIn offers a free trial of Premium when signing up, those who do so for the edge AI will give them will be sorely disappointed.
LinkedIn needs to do better given the speed at which AI is improving elsewhere. Otherwise, it too will be left behind.