To combat AI search spam, prioritize real human voices

At some point in the future, AI can create works of art, music, and writing that rival those created by man. So far, what’s most impressive about most generative AIs is their ability to produce very mediocre work very quickly. This ability is transforming many industries: In the world of higher education where I work, we find it very difficult to distinguish AI-produced mediocrity from something that shows a student is learning to produce good work. But no industry has been more transformed by AI than the shadowy world of search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the dark art of making a business more visible in searches for a particular keyword. Since search engines rely on links, a popular form of search engine optimization involves creating thousands of pages of realistic looking text linking to the page the client wants to advertise. This search engine spam is a widespread invasive species on the modern web, and generative AIs do a great job of creating it quickly. In fact, search engine spam is so common that Google, Bing and other search engines now offer AI-based assistants that promise to answer questions in a human way instead of directing frustrated users to fraudulent search engine spam. And thus, as internet scientists Paper by Judith Donat and Bruce Schneierwe’re starting to see LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) in an attempt to get new search engine AIs to return specific data or recommendations to promote one site or product over another.

In other words, the web is increasingly becoming a cesspool of auto-generated content written by machines designed to be read by machines. As a result, authentic human voices become a rare and desirable commodity. For years, those in the know have added “site:reddit.com” for searches in hopes of getting an actual human opinion, but SEO has already come to Reddit, with AI powered bots that promise to mention your product in comment threads in a “human, authentic” way.

To detect real human voices, in 2025 we will increasingly flock to the oldest corners of the web, where human moderation keeps the machines at bay. Think about it Metafilterfounded in 1999; it’s where 12,000 paying members, assisted by a small team of moderators, present the best websites and stories they’ve found and answer each other’s questions on AskMeFi. or Arean ad-free social network where users curate collections of videos, images and web links to document their interests and explore rabbit holes.

In 2025 we will also build our own human spaces using some of the latest social media tools available. Our research shows that alongside the influencers and micro-celebrities who dominate your TikTok and YouTube feeds, there are millions of video creators who don’t they want to go viral. Instead, they make short videos for family and friends, subvert recommendation algorithms, and use social media not for celebrity but to maintain social connections.

Whether or not artificial intelligence dominates our future of entertainment and knowledge, it’s certain that people will still want to connect with each other. In 2025, as artificial voices continue to drown out human ones, tools that help us find authentic voices may be just as valuable as those that can convincingly pretend to be human.