Google Is Actively Working On A Fix For The AI Spam In Your Discover Feed

While Google's central purpose remains acting as a search engine to help you find whatever you may need, it has also taken steps to get ahead of you. Elements like the Google Discover feed seek to use your data to send you articles, videos, and more that align with your consistent interests. This may seem like a decent way to curate a simplistic user feed, but the concept has shown a major flaw as of late. Just as Google Gemini AI plus Gmail is an untrustworthy mix, Google's Discover is made worse by an influx of AI-generated spam articles — something Google is finally hoping to address.

These AI-generated posts aren't to be taken lightly, with the Press Gazette explaining that these innumerable stories spread misleading and false information. The intriguing headlines tend to drive user traffic, thrusting them to the top of the Google Discover rankings and putting them in front of more people. The Gazette reported that a Google spokesperson said, "We're actively working on a fix that will better address the specific type of spam that's being referenced here, maintaining our high bar for quality in Discover." Google currently uses anti-spam technology and has policies against low-effort, manipulative content.

As Google tries to get this spam content under control, it's a good idea to familiarize oneself with it. This way, you and the people you care about who aren't too media and tech-savvy can protect yourselves and limit this media's growth.

Seeing as these AI articles are pretty pervasive across many users' Google Discover feeds, and are only being pushed harder by the algorithm, it's not hard to find them. If you're not so sure, though, there are some telltale signs the article you're looking at isn't legit. For one, if the subject matter isn't being reported by a reputable source, odds are it's entirely made up. While this doesn't necessarily mean it's AI, testing the text via AI detectors like Pangram or ZeroGPT can likely settle that debate. If you don't want to go through all that trouble, simply the domain name could be quite revealing. Oftentimes, it's a random assortment of words that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Malcolm Coles, a British audience growth consultant, spoke to the Press Gazette about this and explained how it's key to the Google Discover AI takeover. "They're probably buying lapsed domains and reinvigorating them – and then using deliberately alarming or surprising headlines to get people to click, followed by giving information so detailed that it feels like it must be reliable," Coles told the publication. At the end of the day, the goal for the entities behind these AI clickbait articles is to make money. They generate large profits from traffic, which is why thousands of such sites have popped up, seemingly with little purpose other than to farm engagement and generate revenue.

This doesn't rank anywhere near the weirdest ways people are using AI, but it's undoubtedly one of the more malicious. Hopefully, Google can wrangle these AI sites and articles before the impacts of their disinformation reach a grander scale beyond the Google Discover feed.