In a recent Search off the Record podcast, Google’s Lizzie Sussman and John Mueller discussed the use of artificial intelligence-generated images on websites.
Some of their views may seem surprising, given the way Google handles textual content generated by artificial intelligence.
John Mueller emphasized the inherent limitations of AI image generator technology.
Automatically generated content.
Automatically generated text content is prohibited for Google searches in the limited context of using it to manipulate search results.
Google’s guidelines for auto-generated content state :
“In cases where it is intended to manipulate search rankings rather than help users, Google may take action against such content.”
Google’s John Mueller is also on record as saying that text content generated by artificial intelligence is considered spam :
“For us, they would essentially still fall into the auto-generated content category, which we’ve had in the Webmaster’s Guide almost from the beginning.
I suspect that maybe the quality of the content is a little bit better than the really old tools, but for us it’s still automatically generated content, which means that for us it’s still against the Webmaster’s Guide. So we’ll consider it spam.
…But for us, if we see something being automatically generated, then the web spam team can definitely take action on that.”
And perhaps as a sign of the rapid pace of technological development, there are gray areas in Google’s bans on automatic content creation.
…But for us, if we see something being generated automatically, then the web spam team can definitely take action on that.
And perhaps as a sign of the rapid pace of technological development, there are gray areas in Google’s bans on automatic content creation.
For example, using automatic text translation to create content is against the guidelines unless the content is reviewed and curated by a human.
In the auto-generated content guidelines above, auto-translated content is prohibited by the following statement:
“Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publication.”
Google also allows auto-generated meta descriptions , presumably because meta descriptions are not used for ranking purposes.
“For larger database-driven sites, such as product aggregators, handwritten descriptions may not be possible. …Software-generated descriptions may be appropriate and encouraged.”
So Google doesn’t ban AI content universally, only in certain situations.
AI-generated images.
Given that AI-generated content can qualify for ranking in Google Images, one would think that AI-generated images are also banned.
But apparently that’s not the case.
Lizzie Sussman and John Mueller hypothetically discussed the use of AI-generated content on Google, and they were fine with it.
Here’s what they said :
“Lizzie Sussman: Hey! So, to push us back, I know you’ve been working a lot with DALL-E on the Craiyon site and all those kinds of places to get funny images.
And I’m wondering what you would say about using DALL-E to create images for our site, Google Search Central, if we just started implementing it to update images throughout the site – what would you say to that?
John Mueller: That would be an exciting move.”
The only part where Muller expresses reservations about using AI for images is the image of something that should be real, like a screenshot.
Mueller continued:
“I think the tricky part would be that if you’re showing screenshots of certain things and transferring them into some kind of machine art thing, you might not necessarily get real screenshots.
Lizzie Sussman: That could go in an interesting direction. Okay, it sounds like you bought it. Would you do it?
John Mueller: I would try it. I mean…
Lizzie Sussman: You’re not going to tell me no?
John Mueller: I’m not going to say no.
I have no idea what it’s going to look like. It’s probably going to look really cool. Or maybe for Halloween we could do it.”
Limitations of AI-generated content
John Mueller’s only caveat about AI images is that the technology is based on image datasets, so the ability to generate an image is limited to what is in the image library it was trained on.
Lizzie and John continued the discussion:
“I think one of the difficult parts of all these tools is that they’re built on a known image library.
And if there aren’t enough reflected images out there, then whatever you ask is somehow very vague.
So I tried a lot of SEO terms once, and most of the time when he understood that it was some kind of SEO-oriented marketing, he would show me a graph, like a bar graph with a line graph construction
, and it’s like: “This is SEO.”
It’s like: “Well, it’s kind of like…it’s…”
Lizzie Sussman: That’s your opinion, man.
John Mueller: Yeah. Bull’s-eye.”