I’ve been trying not to jump on the AI bandwagon too much, but I have to talk about Google’s announcement today.
From the FAQ section of their announcement:
Q. “Should I use AI to generate content?”
A. “If you see AI as an essential way to help you produce content that is helpful and original, it might be useful to consider. If you see AI as an inexpensive, easy way to game search engine rankings, then no.” – Google.
I’ve got to admit, I really wasn’t expecting Google to come out with this. But I suppose that with the introduction of Bard (Google’s answer to ChatGPT) they can’t really tell the rest of the internet that they aren’t allowed to use AI to generate content whatsoever…
To me, Google’s announcement appears to give people the green light to use AI to produce content, which is something the Search giant seems to have been against historically and is slightly in contradiction to the two recent ‘Helpful Content Updates’ which looked to reward “Helpful content written by people, for people” – which is a direct quote from Google regarding these updates.
I’ve been advising clients against using ChatGPT to generate content that is copied and pasted directly onto their websites. This announcement doesn’t entirely change my stance on that, but perhaps it is worth at least experimenting with AI generated content. I still wouldn’t copy and paste directly personally. If it feels like cheating/spammy practice, it probably is.
Just to be clear, I still expect human written content that demonstrates EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) to perform better than AI content (at least I’d hope it would!)
I also find Google’s new stance on AI content a bit confusing. How will they differ between content that has been created to “game search engine rankings” vs. it being an “essential way to help you produce content that is helpful and original”? 99% of people who are going to generate AI content for their website/blog are probably doing so to increase organic traffic to their website. If they were doing it for their passion or because they have something genuinely helpful and original to share, they’d probably write it themselves! It almost feels like Google is admitting defeat against AI content 😳
One thing is for certain, the web is about to become increasingly bloated, and fast!
These are just my current thoughts on the subject. The next few months will be enlightening and my opinions/thoughts are subject to change.
Take a look at Google’s announcement here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content