Google News searches ranked AI-generated ripoffs above real articles — including a Post exclusive
NY Post
Google News searches turn up AI-generated articles that brazenly steal from legitimate media outlets – and The Post has already identified at least one such ripoff of its own published work.
Late last week, The Post tested Google News by searching for recent articles about Federal Trade Commission nominee Melissa Holyoak and sorting the results by most recent date of publication.
The Post’s exclusive Jan. 8 story about Holyoak was listed lower in search results than a nearly identical ripoff – published by an outlet with the generic name “Business News” and the bizarre domain address “biz.crast.net” that seemingly cranks out troves of AI-generated articles.
The fake version of the article featured the same artwork – and even included references to “The Post” in its regurgitated copy. The ripoff is attributed to “Shawn Johnson,” whose byline turned up more than 17,800 pages of results and published dozens of articles last Friday alone.
By late afternoon on Friday, a Google spokesperson confirmed the article “violates our policy and will be removed.”
Google also confirmed that AI-generated content is not against its policies, but that content can be removed if it is determined to be “spam” that was published specifically to rank high in News results.
