Google has no qualms about promoting AI-generated content… if it is ‘helpful’

The capabilities of AI might be vastly limited at present, but this does not mean that the latter cannot be of some use, especially to online journalists. You see, writing an article can sometimes be a rather tedious process. Perhaps that is why outlets like CNET have recently started to rely on AI-written pieces instead. While this might sound shady at first, Google seems to be fine with ranking articles created by “automation technology” (as the CNET disclaimer reads) highly, so long as they are helpful. The conundrum of AI-generated works and how they are treated by Google was the subject of a dedicated article by Futurism.

Over the past couple of years, artificial intelligence has slowly but steadily been escaping the realm of fiction and clashing with the one produced by our mundane genuine human minds. The CNET example is hardly of any major consequence now, but its implications can make a world of a difference.

A good example would be ChatGPT. While technically merely a chatbot, the latter took the world by storm. It was developed by OpenAI and launched at the end of 2022. The company was gracious enough to make ChatGPT free for now, a situation that can change in the near future.

The point is that you need not spend a lot of time pondering about the implications of AI and how we as a society approach it. A small exchange with ChatGPT will be enough to leave you with a sense of awe, or, at the very least, feeling very uncanny and concerned about your future job security.

It is precisely big tech companies like Google that will ultimately determine how extensive a role artificial intelligence will play in our daily lives, as they will be the ones largely driving the implementation of said technology. With Google seemingly having no qualms about it, the process is bound to be interesting.