Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly present in the business world, bringing various advantages such as automating processes, making more accurate decisions and increasing efficiency.

It is also increasingly being used to produce content (see ChatGPT and Bard AI tool), but until recently Google’s official position seemed to be to reject this type of AI-generated content and this is how various reference sources understood it.

As everything evolves, Google recently published clarifications regarding AI-generated content.

References from SEJ (Search Engine Journal) stating that Google considered AI-generated content to be webspam and against its webmaster guidelines (1 and 2).

google doesn’t like AI-generated content

However, in a more recent post on its Webmaster blog (3), the company clarified that the use of AI can be useful as long as the content created is of quality, adds value for users and is not created with the aim of manipulating search rankings (SEO).

google webmaster approves AI content

It’s important for companies to keep these guidelines in mind when using AI in their content production processes.

Our view

Although it seems clear that Google in the past did not accept content written by AI, there is evidence that Google has in fact always accepted content generated by artificial intelligence as long as it is..:

Useful to the user;
Adapted, i.e. proofread by a human being to avoid summarising or factual errors;

Here are some prints and information from Nov 2022 from Google’s Danny Sullivan.

danny sullivan – ai content is not bad NOV 2022 Danny Sullivan quotes google webmaster guidelines on spammy content

This information is in line with the guidelines available in Search Central on spam policies.

Direct quote:

Automated spammy content
Spammy automatic content is created programmatically without producing anything original or adding enough value. Instead, it is generated with the primary aim of manipulating search rankings rather than helping users. Examples of automated spam content:

Text that makes no sense to the reader but contains search keywords
Text translated by an automatic tool without human review before publication
Text generated with automated processes without considering quality or user experience
Text created with automatic generation of synonyms, paraphrases or obfuscation techniques
Text generated based on copies of feeds or search results
Groupings or combinations of content from various web pages without significant addition of value

In other words, Google already allowed good AI-generated content to be used and, in reality, there are many practical cases of this type of content being well positioned and ranking very well for highly demanding searches.

Anything you’d like to add? Coment below.

Sources:

(1) https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-generated-content-spam-383454 

(2) https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/

(3) https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content?hl=pt-br