Japanese search marketing expert Kenichi Suzuki has published key insights from the recently concluded Google Search Central Live Tokyo 2023. Joining him was Google Search Team Analyst Gary Illyes, and they answered questions on artificial intelligence (AI), upcoming Google features and the Search Generative Experience.

A highlight of Suzuki’s post was Gary’s answer to a question about how they treat fake experiences generated by AI to comply with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness).

Gary revealed that Google is having an internal discussion and is currently working on an AI policy to address this issue and, presumably, more.

Here’s the English translation from Suzuki’s post:

Question: What would Google do if an experience (which is important in E-E-A-T) is created by AI even though it is not actually experienced?

Gary: We are internally discussing how to respond. We will announce when we have a policy that can be made public.

Google’s current public stance on AI-generated content was also reiterated during the event.

He echoed that Google ranks your content based on quality rather than how it’s produced. He also said that publishers in Google’s ecosystem only need to explicitly label their content as AI-generated if this information is helpful for the readers.

However, the search analyst warns you should only publish content after vetting its quality through human review.

“Publishing AI-generated content as-is is discouraged. AI does not necessarily write only correct information. It should be published only after human review,” said Illyes.

The same is true with translated content. Even if your content is translated by machine learning, human experts should still vet them. Illyes cited Search Central as an example of this:

“The documents in Search Central are also machine-translated, but they are published after being checked by humans.”

There’s an ongoing debate on how AI should be regulated. In a previous article, we discussed OpenAI’s public stance on the issue: more government regulation and corporate transparency. On the other hand, Google is advocating for more autonomy and self-regulation in the name of innovation. (Read more: Google’s AI Policy Agenda)

Google and other big tech companies like Facebook are also facing stricter government scrutiny, as fears of fake news and disinformation (primarily fueled by geopolitical issues) are growing worldwide.

As AI continues to evolve, so too should our policies governing it. This means that publications and marketers must practice responsible AI use when crafting content, heavily emphasizing human review and quality assurance processes.

While generative AI streamlines content creation, this might come at the cost of quality and search rankings.

At this moment, when Google is yet to release its search policies on AI, it’s best to rely on human expertise, know-how and search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. This is the only risk-free and reliable method to maintain and reinforce your search visibility.

Here’s the full post from Kenichi Suzuki.

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