LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is experimenting with another mechanism to bring generative AI into the app- an AI assistant in your LinkedIn inbox that is supposed to feed quick answers as you engage in your direct messages.
the new LinkedIn inbox assistant would be accessible via a dedicated icon in the UI that would give you a generative AI assistant for your LinkedIn responses. It could make it easier to research key points, check spelling, get advice on conversational elements etc.

The acquisition would be building on the expansive generative AI empire that Microsoft has been constructing and seeking to leverage the partnership with OpenAI to place ChatGPT-like tools on every surface it can-which already saw it add AI-generated profile summaries, job descriptions, post creation prompts, and more to the LinkedIn experience.
 
LinkedIn also added generative AI messages for job candidates in its Recruiter platform last month.

It would also finally see LinkedIn follow through on its inbox assistant tool, something it actually first previewed as far back as 2016.
This is a slightly fuzzy image, taken seven years ago from a LinkedIn presentation, when LinkedIn previewed its new "InBot" option. InBot, powered in part by Microsoft's growing AI tools at the time, would synch with your calendar, which would then enable it to automatically schedule meetings on your behalf, arrange phone calls, follow-ups, and much more.

But it never was. For some reason, LinkedIn abandoned the project shortly after this announcement-most likely because LinkedIn was looking to latch onto the short-lived messaging bots trend, which Meta believed would be a revolution in customer service. Till it wasn't.

Since messaging bots never took off either, LinkedIn probably did not care-but interestingly, even then, barely a year after Microsoft acquired the app, LinkedIn was already talking about the potential for merging Microsoft-powered AI tools into LinkedIn's functions.
It's taken a long time for that to actually take place, but soon we might see a better iteration of InBot come around, which would be able to theoretically include those originally planned functions plus more advanced generative AI responses and prompts.

That might actually prove to be pretty useful on LinkedIn, with various functions that could help you maximize your lead nurturing efforts, including immediately accessible information about the user with whom you're communicating, so you can personalize the exchange.

Of course, there is also a chance that the more AI features LinkedIn will add, the less human-friendly the application will be, and the users have generative tools to come up with more posts, messages, profile summaries, and everything in between over time.

And in theory, that could eventually mean an awful lot of interactions on LinkedIn are bots talking to other bots while the humans behind the accounts stay hidden in the background. Which would make for some interesting IRL meet-up scenarios as the engagement happens in the app – but it does also seem like LinkedIn may be maybe overdoing it depending on how all these tools are integrated.

We'll see. Not even a timeline for the eventual launch of the new AI chatbot tool is yet set.