Last week, Google announced Opal, a Google Labs project, expanded to more regions. Well, it also explained how you can use this tool to create optimized content in a scalable way - consistently and quickly, without much human intervention. Yea, does this seem like something that might be against the Google Search guidelines?
I spotted this visa Nate Hake on X who wrote, "Google is now selling a *literal* AI spam machine." He shared a screenshot of the blog post and summarized it as "Google advertises "Opal" as ideal for "creating" scaled AI content like: "optimized" AI blog posts, fake imagery and AI travel planning content."
Yep, the Google blog post says, and I quote exactly:
- Creators and marketers have also quickly adopted Opal to help them create custom content in a consistent, scalable way.
- Marketing asset generators: Tools that take a single product concept and instantly generate optimized blog posts, social media captions and video ad scripts.
- Dynamic visual tools: Applications that produce composite media, such as generating an image and overlaying it with custom text for personalized campaigns.
If you read Google's AI-generated content documentation, Google specifically writes, "using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate Google's spam policy on scaled content abuse." It sounds like optimized content in a scalable way would be something against Google's scaled content abuse policy.
As former Google spam fighter said on X, "This laughs in the face of a lot of Google’s own teams that, for decades, fought spam and abuse in search."
Lily Ray summed up the concern for publishers who might not know better on X, she wrote, "Optimized AI blog posts that will later get your site tanked by our own algorithms, got it."
Jeremy Knauff wrote on X, "Google: Don’t create mass produced, low quality content. Also Google: Use our tool to create mass produced, low quality content."
Here are some of those posts:
This laughs in the face of a lot of Google’s own teams that, for decades, fought spam and abuse in search. https://t.co/cNp2SR23Ee
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) November 9, 2025
Optimized AI blog posts that will later get your site tanked by our own algorithms, got it https://t.co/9YvaASlAue
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 9, 2025
Google: Don’t create mass produced, low quality content.
— Jeremy Knauff (@jeremyknauff) November 7, 2025
Also Google: Use our tool to create mass produced, low quality content.
Google has employees who have been trying to get rid of spam for decades, and now it's offering AI spam creation services. I wonder how those employees feel about this.
— Eric Novinson (@enovinson) November 8, 2025
I wonder if this is Google's left hand not talking to its right hand?
Forum discussion at X.
Update: Here is a statement from a Google spokesperson on this:
This Google Labs experiment helps people develop mini-apps, and we're seeing people create apps that help them brainstorm narratives and first drafts of marketing content to build upon. In Search, our systems aim to surface original content and our spam policies are focused on fighting content that is designed to manipulate Search while offering little value to users.
