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As AI-based technologies keep evolving to produce stunning images from text inputs, companies and website owners wait to see Google’s stand on using such technologies to enhance websites. Google sees great potential in the inclusion of AI images on web pages. The topic resurfaced when two Google employees shared their opinions on the Search off the Record podcast. They also discussed the shortcomings of the current AI image generator technology. 

Considering Google’s strict mandate on automatically generated text content in Google searches, it is interesting to know how they treat AI-generated images. Fortunately, Google will not prohibit AI-generated images stating search result manipulation. They approved the idea of using image-generating programs like DALL-E on websites! Then there is one aspect of the hypothetical situation the company representatives did not approve of. They were against using AI to generate images of screenshots because of the current image generator machines’ inability to create actual screenshots. 

Automatically generated text content

In the present context, Google will penalise sites that use auto-generated content to quell the practice that will negatively impact the accuracy and relevance of search rankings. One of them even called such content spam. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines will be used to categorise, and the webspam team will take action against such content. Even then, there is little relaxation in using such text content, especially when it is reviewed and curated by a human. In essence, any auto-generated text content that goes unsupervised by humans will be entitled “against Webmaster Guidelines”. On the flip side, Google allows you to use auto-generated text for generating meta descriptions because Google does not consider the factor for ranking purposes-they encourage it.

Shortcomings of AI-Generated Content

Their biggest concern about such images stems from the fact that the technology depended entirely on image datasets. Outcomes from such image-generators will be biassed towards the image library they were trained on. The case becomes even more complicated if the requested images do not feature in the library. For example, when the guests tried to generate images with numerous SEO terms, they produced images related to marketing-SEO, such as graphs, bar charts, etc. 

What is the verdict on AI images? 

According to the interviewees, using AI images inside websites will be allowed to happen. Although there are prohibitions/restrictions on auto-generated text content for google searches and rankings, similar restrictions will not be imposed on AI-generated images. Such images will appear in SERPs and be considered for rankings.