LinkedIn & AI: Risk of warnings for unlabeled content

Countless business users on LinkedIn publish content directly from AI tools—their timelines are filled with meaningless sales babble written by artificial intelligence.

From texts to presentations to images, everything is includedTheoretically, a warning can already be issued if AI-generated texts are published without labeling, giving the impression that the article was written exclusively by a human.

It becomes particularly critical when a business or public context is affected.

Regulatory

◉ EU AI Regulation (AI Act): From August 2026, there will be a labelling requirement for AI-generated content, provided that they are likely to mislead and provide the public with information on issues of public interest – such as news, political or social content.

◉ Not all content is affected: The obligation applies in particular to so-called deepfakes or when AI texts have a special informational value with public relevance.

◉ Competition law risks: Anyone who fakes authorship of AI-generated texts – for example, if the author profile shows a human as the author, but the text actually comes from an AI – can be warned because this is considered misleading.

Current practice on LinkedIn

➡️ The law is still in a transitional phase until August 2026, but platforms like LinkedIn can already establish their own guidelines or community guidelines for labeling.

➡️ Even without an explicit legal obligation, a warning may be issued to competitors if professional or business interests are affected and the impression is created that the text originally came from the human user.

➡️ Private postings without a commercial or public reference, however, are not subject to the labeling requirement.

Conclusion

The risk of a warning exists especially when commercial or publicly relevant AI texts are published without notice and could thereby deceive others.

Who on Play it safe should therefore include transparent information, for example via a profile, an imprint or a standardized note under the posts.

This provides legal protection without having to label each individual post separately. Whether this practice reduces the amount of sales trash posted on LinkedIn remains questionable, however...

Sierks Media / © Photo: Immo Wegmann, Unsplash