Hey Bing, Google, And OpenAI…Thanks A Minion!

You told me to write high-quality content
You sold me on traffic and top 10 search ranking
So I worked wholeheartedly writing words with wild abandonment
Imagining all the riches that I’d soon be banking

You said write for people, not bots
Make it free, don’t paywall it
Hold nothing back, write lots
And our spiders will crawl it

You told me to create unique and original content
Let me tell you, I did, and it’s real bloody hard
The hours, days, weeks, months, and years I’ve spent
To eventually do what…get myself Google barred?

You warned that content scraped, duplicated, or plagiarized
Would get my sites de-indexed and my pages penalized
So I followed your guidelines, I optimized for SEO
And complied with algorithms so strange that seemingly change every few days or so

Then ChatGPT ushered in the New Age of AI
Where you can freely scrape content to present as your own
So I’m prompted to ask cause I’m up for the task:
Are you just going to EEATs me up and spit in my eye
And tell me I shouldn’t mumble and grumble and groan?

You promised us traffic and dangled SERP carrots
But visitors don’t even need to visit no more
Cause now they can all chat with stochastic parrots
But…thank you for links in the footnotes that they’ll just ignore.

What’s the score? When will I get more?
Search engine giants, am I now your whore?
Will I just keep putting out content for you till I’m all spent and sore?
Hey Bing, what’s my edgy thing in this whiz-bang transaction?
Hey Google, where’s my consensual contextual satisfaction?
Hey OpenAI, how do I get a slice of the pie of your hot bot interaction?

I know the time has come… AI has changed the game forever
I know things for some will be hard and for others seriously funny
I’m not moralizing it or ethicalizing it – that’s not my endeavor
I’m just sayin’ that if you’re capitalizing it, then where’s my share of the money?

We’ve all been told that Content is King
And all I hold is my humble opinion
If I’m expected to write to feed Google and Bing
Give me the right to a share of their dominion.

After all, it’s our work that you’re gonna go use it
As the source and the power to drive your AIs
So strive to empower, don’t think to abuse it
And of course, please don’t lose it and be evil guys

You need content creators, it’s simple and plain
You need advertisers for financial gain
We all need to live, so help us maintain
A model that works that we all can sustain

So, Google and Bing, how we gonna sort this thing?
How you gonna be compensating
For the content you’ll be scraping
From everyone who’s given you everything?

In closing, I have one last thing to say
Then I’ll get back to work and be on my way…

I accept that AI is the new paradigm
Except that, oh my, content writing takes time
So, dear Google and Bing, let’s just split the Ka-ching
Make it fair, pay our share, and we’ll all then get by

Let’s aim to preserve some data dignity
When skin in the game and prorata apply
Let’s not pull ranks or make this unruly
Let’s not quibble or squabble over IP or AI

So, many thanks Bing, Google, and OpenAI,
Yours truly, and eagerly awaiting payment in reply.

***

Image credit:
Thank you to all artists,
That helped train the AI,
That helped me create,
That poor little guy.
Source: Dall-E