This internal tension between chasing AI tooling and avoiding AI-generated content is just a prelude to the bigger shift of search engines getting reinvented around generated results instead of found results.
Fast forward 10+ years and for knowledge-related queries search is going to be more about generated results personalized to our level of understanding that at best quote pages, and more likely just reference them in footnotes as primary inputs.
These knowledge-related queries are where most content farms, low quality blogs, and even many news sites get traffic from today. If the balance of power between offense (generating AI content) and defense (detecting AI content) continues to favor offense, there will be a strong incentive to just throw the whole thing out and go all-in on generated results.
Big question is how incentives play out for the people gathering the knowledge about the world, which is the basis for generated results. Right now many/most make money with advertising, but so do content farms, and more generated results means more starving of that revenue source. For a portion of info that people want to know (e.g. factual info, not opinions, guidance, etc), Wikipedia is an alternative fact- and context-gathering model, but if search relies on it more, it will strain Wikipedia's governance model and become more of a single point of failure.
Really interesting stuff ahead.
Fast forward 10+ years and for knowledge-related queries search is going to be more about generated results personalized to our level of understanding that at best quote pages, and more likely just reference them in footnotes as primary inputs.
These knowledge-related queries are where most content farms, low quality blogs, and even many news sites get traffic from today. If the balance of power between offense (generating AI content) and defense (detecting AI content) continues to favor offense, there will be a strong incentive to just throw the whole thing out and go all-in on generated results.
Big question is how incentives play out for the people gathering the knowledge about the world, which is the basis for generated results. Right now many/most make money with advertising, but so do content farms, and more generated results means more starving of that revenue source. For a portion of info that people want to know (e.g. factual info, not opinions, guidance, etc), Wikipedia is an alternative fact- and context-gathering model, but if search relies on it more, it will strain Wikipedia's governance model and become more of a single point of failure.
Really interesting stuff ahead.