Pangram is the company behind the most prominent AI text detector tool out there. For that company to release a study looking at how much AI-generated content there is on social media is a little like Charmin releasing a study revealing an epidemic of skid marks. But hear them out anyway. Their findings are both eye-popping and plausible.
Pangram’s marquee finding is that 41% of longform LinkedIn posts are “flagged as fully AI-generated,” as is 30% of short form content on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is reportedly much more AI-saturated than any other social media platform, unless you consider Medium a social media platform, in which case I regret to inform you that 31% of the longform content you’re engaging with is fully AI generated.
On X, Pangram says 29% of longform content is AI generated—but who is reading those awful longform X posts anyway? Pangram notes that longform X posts are arguably more AI saturated than LinkedIn posts if you count human-AI hybrid content. It claims that “only 53.2% of X articles [get flagged] as fully human-authored,” so keep that in mind if you’re actually thinking of reading one of those. Meanwhile, only 9% of normal X posts are fully AI generated.
On Reddit, 13% of longform writing is fully AI generated, compared to 3% for short form.
On Substack, according to Pangram, only 10% of longform content is AI, and for some weird reason the percentage of shortform AI content is higher at 12%.
Pangram’s data for this report comes from its Chrome extension, which scans content while you browser, and flags it as AI generated where applicable.
A recent trend piece in the New York Times wondered “Was LinkedIn getting more interesting?” That piece doesn’t provide a clear answer, of course, but LinkedIn does seem to operate more and more like the other social media platforms lately. However, “If the central mission is to boost your career, can you be authentic on LinkedIn?” the author of that piece asked. If using AI counts as inauthentic behavior—and it does, right?—that’s looking doubtful.
