AI-Generated Spam Plagues Google News, Outranking Original Reporting

A recent Google search for “adobe train ai content” revealed that an AI-generated spam article plagiarizing WIRED’s original reporting was outranking the legitimate story in Google News results. Despite Google’s recent algorithm changes and spam policies aimed at improving search quality, the prevalence of AI-generated spam in news results remains a significant issue.

Key details of the AI spam article: The spammy website, Syrus #Blog, had copied WIRED’s article with only slight changes to the phrasing and a single hyperlink at the bottom serving as attribution:

• The plagiarized content appeared in 10 other languages, including many that WIRED produces content in, such as Japanese and Spanish.
• Articles from other reputable outlets like Reuters and TechCrunch were also plagiarized on this blog in multiple languages and given similar AI-generated images.
• During late June and early July, Syrus appeared on the first page of Google News results for multiple tech-related queries.

Google’s response and policies: When approached for comment, Google declined to discuss the specific website but reiterated its updated spam policies prohibiting the creation of low-value, unoriginal content at scale for ranking purposes:

• In March, Google announced significant algorithm changes and new spam policies to improve search results, claiming a 45% reduction in low-quality, unoriginal content as of April 19.
• Google’s spam policies directly prohibit abusive scraping, including sites that copy content from other sites, modify it only slightly, and republish it.
• However, Google declined to confirm whether Syrus was in violation of its policies or if the company would take action based on this reporting.

Challenges for original content creators: SEO experts express frustration and anxiety over the lack of recourse for publishers affected by AI-generated spam outranking their content:

• Some websites have lost a majority of their traffic due to Google’s search algorithm updates over the years, with no clear path to address the issue.
• While Google has made progress in filtering out irrelevant spam, the prevalence of AI-generated content in news results remains a concern.
• Unless spammy sites with AI content are removed from search results, publishers may have less incentive to produce high-quality content, and users may have less reason to trust the websites appearing at the top of Google News.

Broader implications: The rise of AI-generated spam in Google News results undermines the value of original reporting and erodes user trust in the search engine’s ability to surface reliable information:

• If left unchecked, the proliferation of AI spam could disincentivize publishers from investing in high-quality journalism, as their work may be easily plagiarized and outranked by low-effort, machine-generated content.
• Users may grow increasingly skeptical of the news sources appearing at the top of search results, making it more difficult to find trustworthy information on important topics.
• Google must take more decisive action to identify and remove AI-generated spam from its news results to maintain the integrity of its search engine and support the work of legitimate publishers.