--- title: "The Top Image of William Shakespeare on Google is Lazy AI Slop" description: "Googling the name \"William Shakespeare,\" one of the greatest writers in the English language, prioritizes a blatantly AI-generated image." date: "2024-11-16" modified: "2024-11-16" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/top-image-william-shakespeare-google-ai-slop" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "ai-generated content" - "generative ai" - "Google" - "the digest" --- # The Top Image of William Shakespeare on Google is Lazy AI Slop ![]() *\Image: Futurism\* ## Will.I.Am Shakespeare It's no secret that Google has been [slammed with a tidal wave]() of AI-generated slop. The wide proliferation of easy-to-use large language models and image generators has polluted the company's search results, watering down its value as the de facto librarian of the internet. Even just Googling the name "William Shakespeare," often regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, prioritizes a [blatantly AI-generated image]() of the iconic playwright. It doesn't take much to identify the prominently featured portrait as the output of an image generator — as far as we can tell, the English writer had five, not six fingers on his left hand. Besides, why not highlight the plentiful 17th-century renditions of the playwright's likeness instead? It's not like there aren't any portraits of the man Google's search results could surface to the top instead. ![]() ## Slop Pick The image links back to an [uninspiring and mostly redundant biography]() of Shakespeare's life on Medium, text befit of a header image as lazy as this one. The author, C.L. Nichols, has published dozens of articles on Medium, most of which feature equally lazy AI-generated images, including portraits of [Fyodr Dostoevsky]() and [Charles Dickens](). As [*Wired* reported]() last month, Medium is drowning in a major influx of AI slop itself. AI detection startups Pangram Labs and Originality AI both found that the blogging platform has been overrun with AI-generated copy. Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine told *Wired* that "AI-generated content that gets posted to Medium is probably up tenfold from the beginning of the year," but claimed that "we're strongly against AI content." However, combating the issue is far harder said than done, with large language models becoming incredibly adept at generating text that remains undetected. Even as the world's leading search engine, Google hasn't fared much better. We've already come across Google prioritizing AI-generated dupes of the works of famous artists including [Johannes Vermeer]() and [Edward Hopper](). How exactly AI-generated images like Shakespeare's cartoonized likeness are floating to the top of Google's search results is hard to say. The company has historically kept the way its algorithms work tightly under wraps. It's nonetheless yet another sign that the search giant is actively losing the war against AI-generated slop. Worse yet, the company is itself making the situation worsel; Google recently rolled out "AI Overview" that's been [caught stealing human-written content]() and more generally [being shockingly bad]() at giving out accurate information. **More on AI slop:** *[Sleazy Company Buys Beloved Blog, Starts Publishing AI-Generated Slop Under the Names of Real Writers Who No Longer Work There]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()