the day the original content died

Don’t worry; the above isn’t the name of a new song I’m about to release in an attempt to trump Don McLean’s 1970s classic American Pie. Although, in the modern era, perhaps I could just throw all of his lyrics and melody into ChatGPT, and whatever it throws out just pass off as my own and bingo, I’ve got a smash hit. Yes, AI is now in full flight, and whilst, thankfully, we’re likely a good few decades away until Arnie is knocking on the door warning us of an artificial intelligence takeover, it seems AI is attacking on the content front instead.

how has AI affected demoslot?

Recently, we came across a competitor who decided to take around a third of the content from our homepage and spin it through AI. The results were less than impressive, to say the least, and it was apparent through both the language and, in some cases, the lack of change that the content had been manipulated, likely through ChatGPT.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened to us here at Demoslot in 2023, with several of our game reviews being copied and pasted into an AI tool and then used on other affiliate sites, with it being claimed as their own. Previously, we laughed it off and were more embarrassed for the bigger sites out there than anything else that had resorted to such cheap tactics to get a quick article published in the search engines. However, on this occasion, due to the perpetrator, with whom we have previously had issues with on another of their sites, we decided to reach out to Google.

After some back and forth with the search engine giant, we received the following correspondence about our homepage claim, and in our opinion, they are setting a very risky precedent by as good as green-lighting anyone to spin content through an unpaid AI tool and then pass it off as their work.

what are the long term problems of AI content in iGaming?

One of the most significant issues that we face is when AI starts feeding itself, with those looking to take a shortcut asking AI to produce an article, and instead of the machine being able to use information that was gained from a trusted source, which is accurate, it instead gets it from AI content that has already been generated and may include errors.

This may sound a little extreme, but as smaller publishers who put in the hard yards across any niche are rewarded less for their time, effort and money spent, the less likely they are to generate informative and detailed pieces of work, especially if it is just going to be put into an AI tool, reworked and then used to outrank the original creator. This has now happened to us on several occasions, and the site we made a claim against above is already outranking us for other competitive terms without putting in the time and dedication shown by ourselves and many other sites in the gambling space.

I think we could all agree that iGaming is a super competitive industry to work in that is always going to come with many trials and tribulations, but with Google's newfound love for newspaper and magazine sites ranking for the top 10 of this and that, them seemingly leaving the back door open for low-value AI content to sneak in can only have a detrimental effect on the quality that's going to be returned to users seeking out information across all areas of the industry, and is also another kick in the teeth for those trying to create high-quality content.

will google regin in AI content at some point?

As others succeed from pumping out 1,000s of AI-generated articles, the inevitable FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) comes into play, with affiliate site owners thinking, "If they are getting huge success from this, then we should be doing it too." This isn't helped by so-called "SEO Experts" posting on social platforms about how easy it is to spin 10,000s of pages of content to steal your competitor's traffic, as seen on X just the other day.

A much longer-term problem for the industry, and indeed the internet, is that whilst AI content may currently be the flavour of the day and helps to save money on paying writers, it could only be a matter of time until that bubble bursts and Google changes its mind and punishes those who have overused AI, much the same as they did with Schema and Rich Results a few years back before it was eventually removed from the majority of gambling related sites.

Undoubtedly, AI is going to play a huge part in all aspects of life as we move forward, but if Google doesn't get a grip on the amount of poor-quality articles being churned out into its index, then smaller, less established publishers will slowly slip by the wayside, the results pages will be filled with content spun dozens of times previously, and those seeking answers to their search queries will be wrongly informed and may begin to look for an alternative source.

I'll finish up by saying I get to see a lot of content from a lot of sources throughout my working day, and if I find it incredibly easy to spot the tell-tale signs of AI content, then how easy is it going to be for Google to pick up on it if they decide to do so, and penalise the serial offenders accordingly, it just seems the tech giant isn't quite bothered enough at this point.