AI content: Is it helpful or spam?

When Google announced the helpful content update, many in the SEO industry expected AI-generated content to get hit hard.

I was expecting AI-generated content to get wiped out by this supposedly sweeping update, comparable to 2011’s Panda algorithm update. Yet, no major impact was recorded.

Soon after, Google released the October 2022 spam update and that’s when we saw websites using AI content affected, although not as dramatically.

What happened? Let me take a few steps back.