(SEO) Using AI generated content? Its no longer about content quality?

Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan in March at Search Central event in NY said quality of content doesn't matter from policies perspective.
To be exact in the slide that he presented last point mentioned “Quality“ of the content doesn’t make a difference for use of generative AI along does NOT mean is scaled content violation, but! Any method of mass generating content should be carefully considered -

• Is it primary to gain search traffic?

• Is it unoriginal?

• Does it provide real, unique value to visitors.

And at the same event Danny also said that Spam practices rather than spam content? Our spam policies are based on curbing abusive practices, rather than types of content. We revised our spam policy page last year to make this clearer and will continue to do more work.

And just a few days after it Google updated official docs to change "web content is spam" to “technique being used” is spam.

That's why I think it's no longer a question of generated by AI but is quality? because from policy perspective now content isn't something that Google looks for to issue penalties rather it's the technique (AI) which they now are looking for to issue penalties.

Quality content created using humans Ok
But similar quality content created using AI - not Ok and will most likely get a scaled content abuse policy violation manual action, if it's being done at scale by a site.

In short SEO professionals and business owners now have to make their site optimisation decisions according to this specific change in policy.

For example in the SEO decision making process this key change in Google's definition of spam affects things like using AI generated content.

Let me explain how ....
Before Google considering "spam is content" which means to demote the ranking of pages in search results Google was looking at what's there on the page and making a decision accordingly (of course using different algorithms for this)

But now Google considering "spam refers to techniques" which means before deciding to promote/demote a page in search rankings Google will NOT be considering if content is spam & is okish in quality or not rather the primary decision factor will be "AI" (technique that was used to create it).

😀 Summary
I think this change in definition discourages AI powered SEO strategies (AI being a technique) and highlights that even if a site is publishing good or okish content which is generated using AI still they may end up violating Google's spam policies.

And may not rank well in Google's search results.

Because it's the technique of creating content which matters more now than content itself.