Recently, one of WIRED's writers, while researching the latest information on Adobe, discovered something quite shocking. The first articles that appeared in a Google searchappeared to be AI Spam content that copied material from other news sources.
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The author, clicking on the top hyperlink, found himself on a spam website called Syrus, filled with stolen, copied articles, many of which use AI-generated illustrations. An entire WIRED article was copied with only minor changes to the phrasing. The only clue to the original source of the article was a hyperlink at the bottom of the webpage.
The bot wasn't just copying articles in English, as versions of this stolen content were found in 10 other languages, including many of the languages in which WIRED produces content, such as Japanese and Spanish.
Other articles originally published by other sources, such as Reuters and TechCrunch, were also plagiarized from this site, translated into multiple languages, and featured similar AI imagery. In late June and early July, the Syrus site appeared to have taken over Google News results, appearing on the first page for many technology-related queries.
As 404 Media reported in January, AI spam articles were appearing multiple times for key queries in Google News search results. Two months later, Google announced major changes to its algorithm and new email spam policies in an effort to improve search results. By the end of April, Google announced that it had completed major adjustments to remove unhelpful results from its search engine ranking system.
However, despite the company's efforts, AI spam content remains a persistent, widespread issue for Google News search results.
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WIRED reached out to the person behind the blog to learn more about how they created it. They claim to have used an AI tool as part of the writing process. “Regarding your concerns about plagiarism, we can assure you that the content creation process involves artificial intelligence tools that analyze and synthesize information from various sources, while always respecting intellectual property,” wrote someone using the name Daniele Syrus.
They point to the single hyperlink at the bottom of the lifted article as sufficient attribution to the original source. However, a link that doesn't even mention the source's name is not a sufficient defense against plagiarism. The person also claims that the goal of the site is not to get clicks from Google's search engine, but to test artificial intelligence algorithms in multiple languages.
Looking at Google’s spam policies, it appears that this blog is in direct violation of the company’s rules on online plagiarism. “Examples of plagiarism include: … websites that copy content from other websites, modify it slightly (for example, by substituting synonyms or using automated techniques), and republish it.” Google spokeswoman Meghann Farnsworth declined to confirm whether this blog violated Google’s policies or whether the company would rank it in Google News results based on this report.
What people who write original articles can do to properly protect their work is unfortunately unclear. Many SEO experts seem to be very concerned about Google's policies, which in this case are not at all transparent.
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Google has mostly provided a decent experience for users, protecting them from seeing random porn sites when searching for unrelated, popular queries. However, it's still reasonable to expect one of the most powerful companies in the world—one that has significant influence over how online content is created, distributed, and consumed—to do a better job of filtering plagiarism and AI spam from Google News search results.
Source: WIRED
