Google Search seemingly won’t penalize AI-generated articles as long as they’re still ‘useful’ - 9to5Google

As ChatGPT took the world by storm in recent months, it’s also since come out that major publication CNET has been publishing articles written by AI. Apparently, Google Search won’t be penalizing that content.

Speaking to Futurism, Google Search public liaison Danny Sullivan said that Google Search is not particularly focused on “how the content is produced” when asked about how Search would treat these AI-generated articles. Sullivan explained:

Our goal for Search is to show helpful, relevant content that’s created for people, rather than to attain search engine rankings. Our ranking team focuses on the usefulness of content, rather than how the content is produced. This allows us to create solutions that aim to reduce all types of unhelpful content in Search, whether it’s produced by humans or through automated processes.

Google announced a change last year to how it ranks pages, called the “helpful content update.” That change attempted to better surface content that was created by experts and “by people, for people,” rather than surfacing search-engine-optimized content that had no goal of actually informing users but instead was just written to capture page views from Search.

Sullivan’s statement regarding “how the content is produced” goes against Google’s sentiment from last year, or at least leaves room for AI content that’s still considered “useful” where Google’s original announcement seemed to imply the opposite. But still, it’s unclear where the line for “...

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.