Been thinking about “Does Google track if content is AI generated?”
My theory has always been, “yes, Google cares if content is AI generated.”
Now, how much they enforce against it is another thing. I think they have to play nice for a while, and also play catch up on how to detect it, then eventually they’ll hammer down on AI content.
“But, Damon. Google says they don’t care about AI generated content.”
- Nearly 100% of the time, do the opposite of what Google says.
- Their latest algorithm just rolled out and guess what was categorically the biggest influence on traffic decreasing? If content on the site was AI generated.
I’ve been reading more about the whole AI content watermarks thing, and that pretty much guarantees Google will care. Not the watermarked images. “Watermarked” content.
How?
Did you know everything you print on your printer has a watermark? It’s so government authorities can track back people sending not nice letters.
In AI content, since it’s not physical, watermarks are created with patterns. For example, every third paragraph, minus a sentence, plus three letters is a letter E. (Totally making this up).
Statistical patterns are easy to identify, especially with words in aggregate. And in a way you’d never know.
Think about credit card numbers. There are only 16 characters on the card, yet that allows for 10,000,000,000,000,000 combinations. That’s 10 QUADRILLION.
Yet, not all numbers work. There’s a pattern. A validation formula called mod 10. Certain numbers in certain orders only create a valid credit card number.
How hard is that to do with letters?
What effectively guarantees Google will leverage this at some point? Legislation is pushing it. Government is requiring that AI generated content be trackable.
EU has the “AI Act.” And, lol, like the NSA needs approval.
So if the data (will) exist(s) on detecting if content is AI generated, you bet Google will use it.
YouTube (owned by Google) already started demonetizing AI generated content, AND increased the requirements to be monetized even without AI… because they know they can’t catch it all.
Even if you’re one of “the good guys.” Sorry… you’re just a casualty of Google’s bigger interests.
