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LaurenClev
Community Manager
LaurenClevCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 20, 2026

AI Workslop: How do you handle it?

  • August 20, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 36 views

Being able to work faster with AI is great, but it can bring new challenges and problems too.

 

I'm sure we've all seen work that looks polished on the surface, then you dig in and realize it's AI slop, the human experience and judgment layer never got applied, and it needs a lot of cleanup.😵‍💫

 

And that cleanup, whether for yourself or on behalf of someone else, can end up taking more time than you saved by using AI in the first place. There's even research putting a number on it: HBR found each piece of "workslop" takes almost two hours to untangle, often longer than doing the task from scratch.

 

There’s been a ton more articles and conversation about it online too: 

 

Are you seeing a rise in AI workslop in your day to day? Is there a specific pattern or type that you’ve seen most often? How do you handle it? 

    1 reply

    LizzieSc
    Adobe Champion
    LizzieScAdobe Champion
    Adobe Champion
    September 8, 2026

    I’ve already been on a LinkedIn rant about this haha, but I think what gets me is how easily ‘polished’ gets mistaken for ‘good’. The research you shared says around half of people who receive workslop end up viewing the sender as less creative, capable, and reliable… if anything I think half is being generous.

    We can all tell when the human layer is missing! The slides are tidy, the summary is complete, the language sounds right, but there’s no judgement, no real point of view, no personality, no sense of who actually made it.

    It definitely extends beyond AI, but I think the rise of AI workslop has made the problem much more obvious. If there’s a big gap between how someone communicates online and how they actually are in person, I always trust the polished version less. Polish without the person behind it erodes trust, AI-written or not.

    AI should help us make better work, not just produce work that looks finished. The human layer isn't optional, it's the whole point! Without it, everything is just very confident-looking guesswork...

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