Roasting LinkedIn AI Trash Images

As a begrudging social media marketer, I know we’re all beholden to the algorithms and that the constant quest for graphics can be a struggle - but AI generated imagery is not the clear solution.

Being from drought-stricken California, I personally want to cry whenever I see one knowing the large water footprint of an AI image and especially when they are bad. We don’t need to turn our planet into Arrakis over these.

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn for my job so I’ve rounded up these and I’ll proceed to professionally roast them in the hopes of encouraging you to find another solution for your social media imagery needs, and provide some alternatives.

Generic AI Illustrations

So far a lot of what I have seen has been generic imagery of people in a boardroom or someone at a desk. This is the most generic example I found. It’s a conference room with a bunch of people in suits staring at a presentation board with a whole lot of nonsense - it says CEO, other words that I think are “Borrowing”, “Organizations” and something else I can’t even decipher, and has some charts and 3 global maps. It’s the most business generic AI image and tells me nothing about what the post is about.

Another is an image of a city with a graphic of a web and icons over it. Much business:

Some are meant to be like illustrated style, but they just end up being cluttered with random icons and copy that doesn’t make sense.

You’ve got all the checkboxes on this image. This has nonsensical copy on it like “Leaw Trial” and “Easty Trial” and then random copy like “Margins”. Plus, repetition of images like charts, clipboards, boxes, and coins with a dollar sign on them. It also has water droplets (ironic given the water wasted to make this trash), diamonds, a truck, and a lightbulb. What does this have to do with reducing churn in Saas?

Another from the same offender post creator is talking about pricing strategy in Saas (with examples being Slack and Hubspot) and came up with this image. We’ve got an image of an old timey computer but with two keyboards, a floppy disk (representing older pricing models) then an image of a chart with random icons and figures. It’s got the nonsensical numbers and text on it and is just basically colorful clutter.

My guess is he actually spent some time writing a detailed prompt for this query to get this kind of result, especially compared to the first. But at that point, why not go with something original?

Text AI Images

These make me downright mad because they don’t have any actual imagery. You don’t need any graphic design skills for this. Someone could literally make a text only graphic in Google Docs and then take a screenshot!

This one says, “Crussh Black Friday This Year 11 11 My Tips” then has tags that say 

  • “Black Friday” 

  • “Black Friday this” 

  • “Sale”

  • “11 Tips” 

  • “11 Tips” 

  • “Black Friday This Tips B1 Tiday”


AI generated image advertising 11 tips to increase black friday sales but with typos

It says the same thing over and over, but blurry and with typos! I don’t want this man’s information because his graphic is sloppy and lazy. Does anyone look at this and think it’s a marker of credibility or are they just scrolling so fast they don’t even notice? 

Could Have Been Stock Photos

There’s another category I’ll call “could have been stock photos” because the AI is clearly taking place of that, but doing it worse.

Some like this one are clearly a photo with AI generated elements in addition - which makes sense given Canva’s usage policy that you can use their assets for marketing as long as you make it your own in some way. But there’s no way this is better than just adding in icons to a stock photo background. For one, that wouldn’t be blurry.

This one is the exact same vibe:

AI generated image of a young Black woman with a headset and icons of a clock, heart, star, and checkbox

Customized AI Imagery

This one is an example of where I could see the reason for using an AI image generator - it’s reflecting a real story of a man going from working at his father’s noodle stand to being a LinkedIn influencer. Getting a custom illustration for this would be expensive, and stock imagery likely wouldn’t tell this story as well. 


In the 10 or so examples I came across for this blog, this is the only one where I felt like it made sense to go this route. 

What can you do instead?

Okay, enough roasting. Time for solutions.

AI images may be “free” but they’re really not when it comes to the environmental cost, and they’re not even good. So, here are other options: 

Canva

Canva has a free plan but if you are annoyed by the limited selections, Canva Pro for an individual is $120 a year and it has tons of templates, photos, illustrations and icons one can use to make a quick graphic or even a video.

Using the Canva free plan, I recreated two of the AI examples in 2 minutes each. I could have done it in less but I had to sort through the paid assets, plus made some tweaks for size and color so they would be a bit more legible. If you just need basic images to get some better engagement on a LinkedIn post, something like this will do.

Video

Right now, video is working far better than still imagery on LinkedIn and Instagram. You can record these on your smartphone or with the built in webcam on a laptop and they do fine as long as you’re in decent lighting. No AI needed. Want to edit? You can do that in Canva too.

Google Docs/Slides

Really don’t know anything about graphic design? Go old school like you’re making a flyer with WordArt except it’s Google Docs so it’s not cheesy. Just use your brand font and colors and it’ll be better than “Crussh Black Friday Black Friday 11 Tips 11 Tips”. You can even use Slides or Powerpoint which have some interesting graphic features - and it’s free and web based.

Closing thoughts

The common thread in a lot of these posts I found is that it’s executives and business owners using them to advance their business interests. If you have C in your title you either:

  • Have enough money to pay a human - even an intern or person in a lower cost of living country - to make your social images

  • Are a scrappy founder and can DIY these

We don’t need AI to take the fun creative jobs involving art. There are any number of easy tools you already have to make content. Too busy to DIY? There are talented contractors or junior employees who would be more than happy to make visually interesting, non blurry images at a rate that’s fair to you and them. Ask your marketing department to carve out some time for thought leadership content on LinkedIn.


A recent report found up to 200,000 Wall Street jobs could be displaced by AI in the next three to five years. Don’t make this go any faster because you’re desperate to shave off a minute here and there for your brand building LinkedIn post.

Hope Dorman