Synthetic Content
Synthetic content is text, images, audio or video that has been made or heavily changed by computer programs, including AI. That's how the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses the term in its November 2024 report on synthetic content. The report covers ways to label it, record where it came from and detect it.
Source: NIST AI 100-4, Reducing Risks Posed by Synthetic Content (November 2024), checked October 29, 2026
What Synthetic Content means for your business
For a business, synthetic content shows up in two places: the words on your site and the pictures. On the words, Google's 2023 guidance on AI-generated content says it rewards quality however content is made, and that using automation mainly to manipulate rankings breaks its spam policies. Our scaled content abuse entry covers the mass-produced version.
Pictures are where synthetic content can mislead a buyer. A made-up photo of a finished kitchen or a smiling crew suggests work and people that may not exist. If you list products in Google's Merchant Center, the rules go further. AI-made product images need a metadata tag that marks them as AI-made, and AI-written titles and descriptions sent to Google have to be labeled as AI-made.
Google's guide to using generative AI on a site asks owners to fact-check AI-written text by hand, including titles, descriptions and image alt text, and to tell readers how a piece was made where that helps them. We'd use AI to help draft, keep a person on every fact, and use real photos of real jobs. If your site has a pile of AI-written pages and you're not sure they help anyone, a review of your site against Google's AI content guidance is where we'd start.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview called it AI-made or altered media, citing Wikipedia, UNESCO, a regulation glossary, YouTube and a Reddit thread about YouTube's synthetic content label. ChatGPT gave a similar definition with AI image examples and cited nothing. Neither mentioned search.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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