The zeitgeist in technology today is all about artificial intelligence. In an effort to attract more users and uses, LinkedIn responds to the buzz. On Thursday, it unveiled a series of new AI-powered services.
The company is betting big on AI and people’s appetite to see it integrated into experiences on the platform, and is offering even more tools using AI, particularly generative AI, to advance things on the site. New features include using more natural prompts to search for jobs or suitable candidates, then providing generative AI tools to help people with their job applications (yes, there is a tool for writing the entire application and cover letter for you); AI to surface relevant learning material (to learn more about AI, naturally); and generative AI to search across LinkedIn to find what you need faster.
There are a few important points to note about LinkedIn’s current focus on AI.
First of all, as we’ve already pointed out, this isn’t LinkedIn’s first AI rodeo. The company has integrated technology into its products since its inception, and one could argue that AI is of very little use. not touch the business.
“We’ve been building with AI since 2007,” said its product manager, Tomer Cohen, in an interview with TechCrunch this week. Indeed, the company’s connection suggestions, which often seemed very strange in what they surfaced, are an example of what happened. “We use it extensively to connect people…for defense (security) and to maintain trust in the ecosystem. It is one of our most powerful tools.
The big change LinkedIn doesn’t want to miss is one that has swept the rest of the tech world: the wave of AI-driven tools aimed at helping everyday people perform human-centered tasks.
LinkedIn is already active in this area. It launched a suite of tools based on OpenAI in October 2023, adding reading and writing tools a month later, as well as tools to help write profiles, recruitment announcements and pages business.
Second, LinkedIn has different expectations than some of its peers when it comes to the current wave of AI tools. Large social players like Meta or X have found themselves facing varying degrees of existential crises due to the explosion of interest in generative AI. How will they respond to it? How will they carry it out? Should they? Perhaps more directly, how can they ensure that newness doesn’t rob their business of the next stage of growth?
LinkedIn is part of Microsoft, which owns a 49% stake in OpenAI and a significant portion of its own AI efforts. In fact, this relieves LinkedIn itself of the pressure to innovate or invest in innovators, allowing it to focus on how it can create or integrate tools for its own needs.
That’s not to say that LinkedIn doesn’t have its own metrics to hit and won’t consider leveraging AI to stay current in the market. And that will still leave a lot of question marks about what LinkedIn chooses to explore for this purpose. The company is most certainly under the scrutiny of regulators: last week it came under fire from European regulators over how it targeted ads based on data from those users’ participation in different LinkedIn groups.
ThirdThere’s something a little ironic about LinkedIn adding so many AI features to the areas where it’s used, helping users take the wheel out of the way when it comes to creating content on the site.
After many years of people joking about how LinkedIn feels somewhere between creepy and cheesy – people are harassed there for business or jobs; people self-promoting and gossiping shamelessly – this suddenly found itself as an island of calm for workers, in the face of the algorithmic spam acrobatics of Facebook and Instagram and the elonification of what was once Twitter .
LinkedIn touts the idea of showcasing your “authentic” personality on the platform: not only by boosting its new verified profile feature (40 million users have been verified now, just a small fraction, so there’s still a way to go) ; but thanks to the many pieces of “thought leadership” you get on the site itself on the merits of being authentic.
Yet as we introduce more ways to use AI to write resumes, update your profile, write letters and other messages, you have to ask yourself what authenticity really means, or what its value is. real.
Below is an overview of some of the new features:
Job searches and applications. We have a new way to search for jobs using conversational prompts. Of course, this always depends on the data and the work that actually exists. For example, finding a job in journalism in London with a salary of at least £100,000 may not pay much, no matter how you phrase it.
Once you find a job and want to apply, you can now generate a cover letter or letter of introduction, and the AI will also give you a closer look at your resume and other work you perform.
Personalization of learning. LinkedIn continues to be bullish on its video learning platform and appears to have found a strong following among users who need to upskill in AI. Cohen said traffic for AI-related courses – which include modules on technical skills as well as non-technical modules such as basic introductions to generative AI – increased by 160% compared to the previous year. ‘last year.
You can be sure that LinkedIn pushes its search algorithms to exploit interest, but it also improves its content with AI in other ways.
For Premium subscribers, it drives what it describes as “expert advice, powered by AI”. Drawing on the expertise of renowned instructors such as Alicia Reece, Anil Gupta, Dr Gemma Leigh Roberts and Lisa Gates, LinkedIn claims its AI-powered coaches will provide personalized responses to users, such as “point departure”.
These will also appear as personalized coaches that a user can access while watching a LinkedIn Learning course.
The third big area where LinkedIn relies heavily on AI is search. If you already use LinkedIn in any way, you’ll know that this is long overdue, as search has been one of the most overlooked parts of the experience on the platform, especially since as the platform has grown.
LinkedIn says it will provide more details on the new search experience in the coming weeks, but expects to see a lot more conversational search as a simpler alternative or replacement for its current search experience, which uses words- keys, network distance, geography and other parameters, but it never feels like it’s giving you the full answer.
Along with all of this, LinkedIn is expanding the availability of Recruiter 2024, adding more tools for marketers and introducing enhanced, premium company pages for small businesses.