Last month, LinkedIn added a button that lets users flag posts as “seems like AI slop,” and within weeks, over a million people clicked on it.
The number comes as no surprise to the majority of users navigating these new AI-filled feeds. According to a recent analysis by AI detection tool Pangram, over 40% of long-form posts on LinkedIn have been detected as fully AI generated.
But when something as simple as an em dash – a staple of seasoned writers for decades – can be enough to get you flagged as AI, then does that mean the line between what’s considered generated and genuine is becoming that much more impossible to draw?
For Dina Mostovaya, founder of integrated marketing and communications agency Mindset, it’s a tension she already knows all too well.
“I have used that dash since I was 15,” Mostovaya tells Tech Funding News in its latest TechTalks video episode. “Because that is the right way to use that dash.”
Mostovaya is referring to a situation that played out with one of her own clients, a founder who had become convinced that a piece commissioned from a trusted writer of four years was AI-generated.
Unfortunately, she says, she had no way to prove otherwise. Because even the AI detectors we rely on so heavily today risk flagging a style of writing that’s been used by a human for years as one that AI has now claimed its own.
“It’s all about trust between people,” Mostovaya argues, adding that the founders who will stand out in this new media landscape are the ones who build a presence that can’t be mistaken for a machine.
What founders still get wrong
Mostovaya has spent six years helping startups and VC funds build the kind of credibility that lasts through the fleeting trends we see emerging every day. And lately, she’s had to adapt that strategy even further.
Mindset recently pivoted from a classic PR agency to an integrated marketing firm, and it was largely due to the fact that the channels founders needed help with – whether that be LinkedIn, podcasts, events, or influencers – have multiplied.
The misconceptions, however, have remained largely the same. Mostovaya says that first-time founders still arrive convinced they can steer editorial coverage, and that a TechCrunch hit will drive sales.
“It is like a person who drives a car and doesn’t have a map,” Mostovaya says of the founders without a clear understanding of communications strategy.
The obsession with top-tier media is its own problem, however, and one that’s becoming harder to justify in a landscape where individual creators and independent media can grow audiences that rival, and sometimes outpace, legacy publications.
Mostovaya refers to a recent LinkedIn post by a16z’s Andrew Chen, where he said “no one ever reads TechCrunch anymore.” While the context was a broader argument about AI and press coverage, the point still stands for founders chasing legacy placements.
“All entrepreneurs live in a kind of bubble,” Mostovaya says. “They communicate with investors, with each other, and of course if someone says, ‘I was published on TechCrunch,’ you immediately want the same result.”
Investors often compound the pressure further, pushing for flagship coverage at the exact moment a niche, targeted media hit would serve the business better.
The new human-to-human tool
Mostovaya argues that offline meetups and community building, whether through events or a simple coffee with a journalist, are becoming much more valuable than any pitch.
The hard part, she says, is the courage to show up, both online and offline, before you feel ready. Too many founders tell themselves they’ll be more visible after the next round, but the credibility they’re waiting to earn is built in the years before they think it matters.
And in a landscape where a million people will click “seems like AI slop” on a post that might be entirely human, perhaps being present in a room no detection tool can flag is becoming a founder’s most valuable asset.
This TechTalks with TFN episode is created in partnership with Mindset.
