According to a late 2025 survey from BetterUp and Stanford’s Social Media Lab, 40% of 1,150 full-time US desk workers received AI-generated slop from a coworker in the preceding month, with respondents reporting that dealing with each instance took nearly two hours on average. Bosses are now pushing back against this growing wave of bloated project proposals and status updates by instituting formal policies that outline where reasonable internal AI use ends and overreliance begins.
Why Companies Are Banning AI Slop in Internal Writing
Driving the corporate crackdown is a gradual increase in time-wasting slop following the late 2022 launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI. Clare Jones, CEO of travel-app maker Polarsteps, explained that merely urging workers to curb the behavior has not been enough. According to Jones, a formal policy creates a shared touchpoint rather than requiring leaders to repeatedly explain expectations.
Founded in 2015, the Amsterdam-based Polarsteps released a set of principles earlier this year for its roughly 100 employees regarding internal AI writing. Jones noted that staff can still use AI to brainstorm and draft, but they are expected to apply their own critical thinking, disclose when they use AI, and ensure final copy reflects their own reasoning and voice. Consumer-facing app copy continues to be produced by professional in-house writers.
Pro Tip: Focus on clarity over volume. According to workplace strategists, sending brief, clear notes instead of lengthy AI-generated documents prevents colleagues from spending hours decoding unnecessary text.
How New AI Policies Work at Leapsome and Clay
Other companies are adopting similar guardrails to combat what tech software engineer Niklas Gruhn popularized in an August 3 blog post as “meat proxies”—workers who share unchecked AI outputs. Jessica Zwaan, vice president of people strategy and operations at HR software company Leapsome, stated that the critical mass of volume has created severe reading fatigue. She recalled spending more time reading prep materials for a recent internal meeting than she did in the meeting itself.
Leapsome rolled out an AI writing policy in mid-August instructing its 130 Berlin and New York employees to prioritize clarity and mindfulness regarding length. The guideline states that if a short prompt produces a long document, it is not worth reading, and specifies that “‘AI wrote it’ isn’t an answer if someone asks what you meant.”
Similarly, sales and marketing automation platform Clay implemented new rules for its staff. Sophie Alpert, a lead engineer at Clay who authored the guidelines, noted she was inspired to take action after colleagues sent her five overtly AI-generated documents in one week and told her to “just ignore that” when asked about confusing sections. Alpert’s policy was shared with a 100-person engineering team in mid-June before expanding to all 550 employees in early August.
The rules at Clay require employees to stand behind every idea and sentence. According to internal company documents, any extra time readers spend decoding unclear writing incurs a multiplicative cost on team time.
Employee Reactions and Workplace Impact
Despite the tighter rules, the policies implemented at Polarsteps, Leapsome, and Clay do not amount to an outright AI ban. Instead, leadership teams report that the standards successfully prevent workers from passing off unexamined AI output as their own thinking.
Employee reception has been largely positive. Zwaan reported that some Leapsome workers actually asked the company to go further by restricting AI usage in employee-to-employee messages and marketing copy. At Polarsteps, Jones stated that the guidance is already generating much more human content across internal channels.
Did you know? A LinkedIn post about Clay’s new AI writing policy by CEO Varun Anand went viral, gathering nearly 10,000 reactions and more than 700 reposts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI slop in the workplace?
AI slop refers to bloated, confusing, and unexamined content—such as project proposals and status updates—generated by artificial intelligence tools and sent to coworkers without proper editing or critical thinking.
Are companies banning artificial intelligence entirely?
No. Companies like Polarsteps, Leapsome, and Clay are establishing guardrails rather than outright bans, permitting staff to use AI for brainstorming and drafting while requiring them to apply personal reasoning and ensure clarity.
What are “meat proxies”?
Meat proxies is a term coined by German software engineer Niklas Gruhn to describe workers who pass along unchecked AI-generated outputs without reviewing or taking personal ownership of the text.
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