A few weeks prior, LinkedIn was gaining popularity as a social media network. Professionals in the business world were drawn to it as a reliable and secure substitute for the unpredictable nature of the recently dubbed “X.” However, if you hope to find genuine human substance there, don’t settle in too soon.
Today, the company—which claims to surpass one billion users this month—unveils its most recent artificial intelligence initiatives, including two that will help users create original content on the platform and offer personalized digests for those who read content on the site.
The new features will first be available to premium (paying) customers and will be available in three locations.
You can apply them to your job-hunting experience, usually when you respond to a recruiter or if you’re a recruiter reaching out to a candidate. You can also use them to spruce up your feed and use AI tools to digest any linked articles, where you can use them to write something clever about that article as you share it.
In the long run, the goal is to assess how these AI technologies are applied to determine the best way to scale them up.
The option to extend to all users will be available if it’s widely relevant, according to LinkedIn’s VP of Product Management, Gyanda Sachdeva. Since premium users on LinkedIn are highly driven, “we expect it to be immediately valuable.”
She further stated that more media, including video, would undoubtedly receive the generative AI treatment in the future. Like the array of AI capabilities that Microsoft-owned LinkedIn revealed last month, OpenAI, the AI goliath that Microsoft now owns 49% of after investing tens of billions of dollars in the firm, will enable these new features.
(Sidenote: It’s noteworthy that LinkedIn has been firing employees, including those in R&D and engineering, in the middle of all of its AI announcements. (The corporation is simplifying, and as it progresses in its development, it is doing it less as a stand-alone business.)
To create generative AI outputs tailored to each individual, LinkedIn mainly uses OpenAI APIs from Azure, taps into OpenAI’s Large Language Models and GPT-4, and combines this with LinkedIn’s private data. LinkedIn refuses to clarify which aspects of the experience are specifically related to their work and which should be attributed to OpenAI.
Nevertheless, the end product is substantially similar to a customized version of ChatGPT. Suppose two distinct individuals come across an identical article on LinkedIn and decide to utilize the AI tool for summarizing the theme or creating a comment about it. In that case, the AI will examine the user’s professional profile and other activities on the platform to generate a summary that is pertinent to the individual.
LinkedIn allows users to ask questions about the material to receive different summaries if they are interested in learning more than what they already know. LinkedIn has developed these AI technologies for several reasons.
First and foremost, it’s assisting the website in overcoming some of the difficulties associated with social media engagement, which may be particularly problematic on LinkedIn given that connections made there are more likely to come from professional networks and users are expected to present their most polished, professional selves. It’s simpler to publish nothing at all at times.
Therefore, the tools are made to encourage users to click and produce more, which will increase their overall time on the website.
Secondly, it maintains LinkedIn at the center of the discourse. These days, everyone is yearning for AI, regardless of whether it’s a novelty or the new normal. To be relevant as it enters its third decade of existence, LinkedIn must include artificial intelligence. Although generative AI is a stimulus for engagement, there may be further applications. Arrive for the new genie tool’s novelty; perhaps stay for the thought-provoking discussions and networking possibilities.
The LinkedIn Premium business is the third sector that these products cover. Although LinkedIn does not disclose the percentage of its $15 billion in sales from paid subscriptions, the segment is rapidly expanding, with income from paid memberships increasing 55% year over year as of last month. To test if it can maintain momentum, it is now sweetening the deal.
