Myths and facts: How Google really deals with AI-generated content

Yes - Google will penalize auto-generated content if it is simply designed to get a better ranking. No - Google does not penalize AI-generated content per se.

Google recently released a search quality update to remove low-quality content from search results. This primarily affects content that is created primarily for search engines, not for users.

Contrary to persistent rumors, Google is not penalizing AI-generated content across the board. In fact, content that is original, useful, and user-friendly still has a chance to rank highly.

The use of AI to reformulate existing content or to automatically generate content from keywords, on the other hand, is viewed critically by Google. However, the penalty in such cases is not due to the use of AI per se, but because the resulting content is not considered original or user-centric.

Google emphasizes that it will generally filter content that has been created solely for the purpose of improving search engine rankings. This is true regardless of whether the content is human-generated, automated, or AI-generated. The company estimates that its update will remove about 40% of such content from search results.