We’ve all heard of AI slop by now. “Workslop” is the latest play on that term, referring to low-quality, AI-generated content in the workplace that looks professional but lacks real substance. This empty, AI-produced material often creates more work for colleagues, wasting time and hindering productivity. In the longform FIR episode for September, Neville and Shel explore the sources of workslop, how big a problem it really is, and what can be done to overcome it.

Also in this episode:

• Chris Heuer, one of the founders of the Social Media Club, is at work on a manifesto for the “H Corporation,” organizations that are human-centered. A recent online discussion set the stage for Chris’s work, which he has summarized in a post.


• Three seemingly disparate studies point to the evolution of the internal communication role.


• Researchers at Amazon have proposed a framework that can make it as easy as typing a prompt to identify a very specific audience for targeted communication.


• Communicators everywhere continue to predict the demise of the humble press release, but one public relations leader has had a very different experience.


• Anthropic and OpenAI have both released reports on how people are using their tools. They are not the same.


• In his Tech Report, Dan York looks back on TypePad, the blogging platform whose shutdown is imminent; AI-generated summaries of websites from Firefox; and Mastodon’s spin on quote posts.

Links from this episode:

• Neville’s remarks on the human-centered organization, along with Chris Heuer’s original LinkedIn post


• Building a Shared Vision: Organizations Advancing Human-Centered AI


• Defining the Human Centered Organization


• The Birth of the H-Corp


• The Effects of Enterprise Social Media on Communication Networks


• AI misinformation and the value of trusted news


• Corporate Affairs is Ripe for AI Disruption


• AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity


• AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable


• AI “workslop” sabotages productivity, study finds


• AI isn’t replacing your job, but ‘workslop’ may be taking it over


• workslop: bad study but excellent word


• An Explainable Natural Language Framework for Identifying and Notifying Target Audiences In Enterprise Communication


• How smart brands are delivering Netflix-level personalization with AI


• We Tested a Press Release in ChatGPT. The Results Changed Everything.


• LinkedIn post from Sarah Evans on press release performance in AI search results


• Sarah Evans’ 10 PR myths


• Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post about how people are using AI for work


• Here’s How People Use AI, Per OpenAI, Anthropic And Ipsos Data


• OpenAI and Anthropic studied how people use ChatGPT and Claude. One big difference emerged.


• Anthropic Finds Businesses Are Mainly Using AI to Automate Work


• How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude – and what the differences tell us

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report

• Typepad is Shutting Down


• Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal


• On Firefox for iOS, summarize a page with a shake or a tap


• Introducing quote posts


• Quoting other posts – Mastodon documentation

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/).

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript

Shel Holtz:
Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 482 of For Immediate Release. This is our long-form episode for September 2025. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California.

Neville Hobson:
And hi everyone, I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz:
As I mentioned, this is our long-form episode. That means we’ll be reporting on six topics of interest to communicators. Interestingly, I think all of them are connected either directly or indirectly to artificial intelligence. I also have Dan York here with an interesting report. You and I both have a few things to say about one of the topics that Dan is reporting on.

As always with our monthly episode, we have some housekeeping before we jump into the topics. Neville, you’re going to catch us up on the items we reported on since the last episode. And we have some comments on some of these reports. That’s an opportunity to remind everybody that we love your comments—please participate in this podcast by sharing them. It doesn’t have to be about something we reported on; you can introduce a topic. This used to happen all the time in the early days of the show—someone would say, “Why don’t you guys talk about this?” and we would, and it became the content of the show. So please leave a comment on the show notes or on LinkedIn—which is where most of our comments come from these days. People leave a thought or some feedback on our announcement of the new episode. You can also do that on Facebook in multiple places. And you can always go to the website and record a comment—there’s a button that says “Leave voicemail” and you can record a 90-second comment. Or send us an MP3 file to fircomments@gmail.com. Lots