At some point in the future, AI can create works of art, music, and writing that rival those created by man. For now, what’s most impressive about most generative AI is their ability to produce a lot of mediocre work very quickly. This capability is transforming many industries: in the world of higher education, where I work, we are discovering that it is very difficult to distinguish mediocrity produced by AI from something that indicates that a student is learning to produce well done. But no industry has been transformed by AI as much as the murky 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 is to create thousands of pages of realistic-looking text with links to the page a client wants to promote. This search engine spam is a pervasive invasive species on the modern web, and generative AIs do a great job of creating it quickly. Indeed, search engine spam is so common that Google, Bing and other search engines now offer AI-powered assistants that promise to answer questions in a human way rather than directing frustrated users to Deceptive search engine spam. And so, as Internet specialists say Document by Judith Donath and Bruce Schneierwe are starting to see LLMO (Large Language ModelOptimization) with the goal of making new search engine AIs return specific data or recommendations to promote one site or product over another.
In other words, the web is increasingly becoming a cesspool of machine-generated, machine-written content designed to be read by machines. As a result, authentic human voices become a rare and desirable commodity. For years, those in the know added “site:reddit.com” to searches in the hope of getting a real human opinion, but SEO has now arrived on Reddit, with AI-powered robots that promise to mention your product in comment threads in a “human and authentic” way.
To find real human voices, in 2025 we will increasingly flock to the oldest corners of the web, where human moderation keeps the machines at bay. Consider Metafilterfounded in 1999; it’s where 12,000 paying members, aided by a small team of moderators, showcase the best websites and stories they’ve found and answer each other’s questions in AskMeFi. Or Arenaan ad-free social network where users curate collections of video clips, images and web links to document their interests and explore rabbit holes.
In 2025, we will also create our own human spaces using some of the newest social media tools available. Our research indicates that alongside the influencers and micro-celebrities who dominate your TikTok and YouTube feeds, there are millions of videographers who don’t do it I want to go viral. Instead, they make short videos for family and friends, subverting recommendation algorithms and using social media not for celebrities but to maintain social connections.
Whether or not AI dominates the future of our entertainment and knowledge, it’s a safe bet that humans will always want to connect with each other. In 2025, as artificial voices continue to drown out human voices, tools that help us find authentic voices could be as valuable as those that can convincingly pretend to be human.
