"Synthetic content" is a good term for some of this new wave of filler media A.I. slop. However, I am seeing a lot of active effort to replace real human content, and search engines seem complicit in pushing it to the head of the queue sometimes.

I was recently looking for some videos on how to do some car repairs. The Friend-Shaped Car has an awkward engine bay, and I wanted to double-check before removing some parts to make room to work. The first hits on a search were for A.I.-narrated videos that only gave the illusion of information, not something useful to a real D.I.Y. situation from a mechanic. There's nothing wrong with my Google-fu, because I've been at this for years. The search engines can censor ideas they don't like, but not synthetic content? Riiiiiight. They want us to make wrong clicks to sites selling more ad revenue and waste our time now, I think.

And I wasn't even using Google's search engine.