August 4, 2025 Update:
This article was substantially revised to replace the earlier 2024 version with a new rewritten version. Attribution to 404 Media was clarified, and the overall structure was improved. The original 2024 article was written and edited by human contributors. The August 2025 revision was carried out under full human oversight.
October–November 2025 Update:
Additional transparency details were added regarding the revision history. The version reviewed by 404 Media was the pre-August 2025 edition, which had been written and edited by human contributors. The update notes were reorganized to document the full timeline of edits. Further adjustments included clarifying how date-based filtering in Google News works and cleaning up punctuation around statements from Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan. No changes were made to the underlying findings of the reporting.
Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by a human.
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Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen
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This article was substantially revised to replace the earlier 2024 version with a new rewritten version. Attribution to 404 Media was clarified, and the overall structure was improved. The original 2024 article was written and edited by human contributors. The August 2025 revision was carried out under full human oversight.
October–November 2025 Update:
Additional transparency details were added regarding the revision history. The version reviewed by 404 Media was the pre-August 2025 edition, which had been written and edited by human contributors. The update notes were reorganized to document the full timeline of edits. Further adjustments included clarifying how date-based filtering in Google News works and cleaning up punctuation around statements from Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan. No changes were made to the underlying findings of the reporting.
Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by a human.
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404 Media’s investigation identified a series of AI-generated articles that appeared in Google News results despite existing policies designed to limit low-quality or automated material. The report documented cases where websites published AI-produced stories that closely resembled legitimate reporting, including articles that reused content from established publications or featured images with visible watermarks. Some of these pieces still surfaced in Google News, raising questions about the effectiveness of current ranking signals in filtering synthetic or repurposed content.
Google acknowledged the examples and explained that they were likely surfaced through manual date-based filtering rather than the system’s default relevance ranking. According to Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan, the date filter instructs the system to show the newest content first, including material that would not typically be prioritized under normal ranking criteria. He said Google evaluates quality independently of how an article is produced and reiterated that mass publication of low-quality AI-generated content is not permitted under company policy.
Sullivan also noted that automated systems can produce imperfect results and said Google continues to refine its ability to highlight original and trustworthy journalism. He added that newer publications may require time to establish visibility within Google News and encouraged outlets using paywalls to provide structured data so that their content can be correctly interpreted by Google’s systems.
Detail: Google Responds to 404 Media’s Findings
In response to 404 Media’s report, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, publicly addressed the issue in posts on X, Mastodon, and Bluesky, clarifying that Google News is not “boosting” AI-generated content.
According to Sullivan, these filters expressly ask “our systems to ignore the regular relevance ranking” and “simply show the latest content in descending order,” which may surface lower-quality results not normally prioritized. He emphasized that Google’s focus “is on the quality of content, [not its method of] production,” reiterating that mass production of low-quality AI content remains against Google’s policies.
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