Michelle Volberg, founder and CEO of tech recruiting company Twill, rolled out an enterprise Claude subscription to her company of 10, and staff began sending Slack messages and emails copied and pasted from Claude, Business Insider reported on 5 November. Business Insider names five companies that have set policies or taken action against AI-written work, which it calls “workslop,” and one boss who fired a worker over it, by our count.
About six months ago, Volberg emailed staff with a simple ask, according to Business Insider: “Please stop talking to me like a robot.” The messages lacked context about clients and included hallucinations, the article says.
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The key insight: Business Insider reported on 5 November that Twill CEO Michelle Volberg asked staff to “stop talking to me like a robot” after an enterprise Claude rollout, and it names five companies that have set policies or taken action against AI-written work, by our count.
Volberg’s policy now is to use AI to brainstorm and work through ideas but to use your own voice for internal communications, Business Insider reported. “If you wouldn’t say it that way in person, email, or Slack — don’t send it.”
Eric Fischgrund, who runs public relations company FischTank PR, bans the use of AI to write content sent to reporters or clients and relies on an AI detector to check, Business Insider reported. Last year, Fischgrund fired one worker who continuously used AI for off-limits purposes: the first time led to a confrontation, the second to a warning, and the worker did it a third time, according to the article. “It’s obvious, it’s annoying,” Fischgrund told Business Insider.
What Was Posted on X
WTF. Michelle Volberg, CEO of tech recruiting firm Twill, rolled out a Claude Enterprise subscription to her 10-person company. Staff began copying Claude-generated messages into Slack and emails, sometimes including hallucinations.
She eventually emailed employees: ‘Please stop talking to me like a robot.’
At FischTank PR, CEO Eric Fischgrund told Business Insider he FIRED an employee after THREE violations of his ban on AI-written client and reporter communications.
@choblin29 posted this at 13:53 UTC on 5 November 2026, relaying Business Insider’s report. It describes Twill CEO Michelle Volberg’s Claude Enterprise rollout to her 10-person company, staff copying Claude-generated messages into Slack and emails, her email asking staff to stop talking to her like a robot, and FischTank PR CEO Eric Fischgrund firing an employee after three violations of his ban on AI-written client and reporter communications. The opening ‘WTF’ is the poster’s framing. Business Insider places the email about six months ago and the firing last year, which the post does not say.
The five companies and the timing of each policy or action are as reported by Business Insider; ‘about six months ago’ and ‘last year’ are its wording. The five-company count is ours.
The Policies and Rules
In August, softwarestartup Clay’s cofounder Varun Anand posted the company’s new AI writing policy on LinkedIn, Business Insider reported. It is not a ban on AI in writing, but it requires workers to stand behind every idea in every sentence and says creating a document should take longer than reading it, according to the article.
Spellbook CEO Scott Stevenson told his team in early September that he would rather see five scrappy bullet points than five perfectly formatted pages, and that communication with customers should always be “hand-written,” Business Insider reported. Zocdoc put out guidance in August encouraging people to “never ship your slop,” according to the article.
Where the Term Comes From
Researchers from the Stanford Social Media Lab and BetterUp Labs coined “workslop” a year ago for low-quality, extra verbose, AI-generated memos, documents, emails and slide decks, according to Business Insider. In their initial research, more than half of those surveyed admitted to sending it, the article says.
“Workslop is predicted by the conditions more than it is in individual behavior,” Kate Niederhoffer, chief scientist at BetterUp Labs, told Business Insider.
As we read the article, the policies it reports target AI-written text sent to people, not AI use as such: Clay’s policy is not a ban on AI in writing, and Twill’s permits AI for brainstorming, Business Insider reports.
As we read Business Insider’s account, the friction appears after adoption: Twill’s messages began after it rolled out an enterprise Claude subscription, the article says.
Kate Niederhoffer, chief scientist, BetterUp Labs, as quoted by Business Insider, 5 November 2026
“Workslop is predicted by the conditions more than it is in individual behavior”
Three Implications
FOR MANAGERS Business Insider reports that Fischgrund relies on an AI detector to check content sent to reporters or clients.
FOR POLICY DESIGN Spellbook CEO Scott Stevenson told his team that communication with customers should always be “hand-written,” Business Insider reported.
FOR THE SCALE In BetterUp Labs and the Stanford Social Media Lab’s initial research, more than half of those surveyed admitted to sending workslop, according to Business Insider.
The framework says the rise of forward-deployed engineering shows that “technical capability has far outpaced organizational readiness”.
As we read it, the companies in Business Insider’s report are writing the rules for AI use after the tools arrived. The framework predates the article and does not discuss these companies.
What Is Not Established
The fired worker is not named. Business Insider does not say how many companies have such policies beyond the five it names, and the five-company count is ours. The survey’s sample size and exact share are not given in the article. A post on X by @choblin29 that relayed the story frames it with “WTF”; that framing is the poster’s.
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Business Insider’s examples run from one CEO’s email to staff, to policies or guidance at Clay and Zocdoc, a rule Spellbook’s CEO gave his team, and one firing at FischTank PR. Twill’s policy, as reported, permits AI for brainstorming but asks staff to use their own voice for internal communications.
A note on sourcing. This piece is based on Business Insider’s 5 November article, read in full, and the X post that relayed it. The five-company count is ours.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
