Google has good news for content creators who often use AI for content generation. Gary Illyes, an analyst from the Google Search team, has explained that content generated by AI is fine to use in search rankings and to train models on. However, it has to satisfy stringent quality requirements and is subject to human curation.
Illyes explained the company's policy toward AI-generated content as ‘human curated’ but not ‘human created’ in an interview with Kenichi Suzuki, according to Search Engine Roundtable.
Illyes described accuracy, originality, and factuality as the key determinants of the worth of AI content. "If you can hold the content quality and the correctness of the content, then technically it doesn't really matter" whether it was created by AI or not, he said.
He cautioned that issues occur when AI output is ‘very similar’ to pre-existing material or includes facts inaccurately stated, which can bring in bias and disinformation into AI models.
Illyes stressed that human review is necessary, not to signal to users, but as an editorial measure to help guarantee accuracy before publication. Merely labeling content as ‘human reviewed’ has no ranking benefit and is not a reliable signal.
Responding to concerns over AI-generated content tainting large language models (LLMs), Illyes explained that the search index itself is not under threat. Nevertheless, model training workflows need to prevent feedback loops wherein AI content trains subsequent AI. He assured that Google's AI Overviews depend on Google Search outcomes and Gemini models search, with factual anchoring being central to avoiding ‘hallucinations.’
It is a message of clarity, especially for publishers to use AI tools to generate content, while also monitoring them. Quality, fact-checked, and original AI-supported content can rank well in search, whereas unedited, duplicate, or erroneous content can harm rankings and reputation.
Also Read:Google’s Search AI Can Use Web Content Without Permission!