An AI Slop "Science" Site Has Been Beating Real Publications in Google Results by Publishing Fake Images of SpaceX Rockets

Yahoo

06-03-2025

If you were searching Google for SpaceX news ahead of this week's delayed Starship launch, be warned! You might have run into AI slop masquerading as news — which often floated to the top of Google results ahead of real journalism.
Google has been promoting an AI slop-filled "science" site titled Science Magazine — which publishes bizarre, error-ridden articles alongside fantastical AI-generated images of nonexistent spacecraft and other oddities — in coveted positions in Google results, including top positions in its News tab and "Top Stories" feature.
Our testing showed that the automated site's content permeated the top search and News results for multiple Google queries, where it held rank alongside real publishers like Ars Technica, NBC News, and CNN, while crowding out other outlets.
To make matters worse, Science Magazine's many articles — which are often laced with misleading or inaccurate details and exaggerations, or are wholly fabricated — are bylined by a roster of fake writers boasting made-up bios designed to boost the perception of legitimacy.
Science Magazine covers — if you can call it that — a range of topics related to science and technology, with a particular emphasis on space exploration (in addition to the occasional perplexing post about the Dallas Cowboys.) One of its favorite subjects is SpaceX, the Elon Musk-helmed private space company. In particular, Science Magazine posts a lot about SpaceX's megarocket, Starship, which has been in the news this week ahead of an anticipated test launch that's been pushed back a few times.
Indeed, two of Science Magazine's Starship stories were promoted by Google in its Top Stories results for the simple query "SpaceX Starship." Both of the top-ranking Science Magazine articles are complete with fake, AI-generated images. They were interspersed alongside news hits from credible publications including Space.com, NBC News, and NASASpaceFlight.
When we clicked on the articles themselves, the full picture of how truly garbage-tier Science Magazine's articles are quickly became clear.
One of the posts, titled "Countdown Begins: A Bold New Era of Space Travel with Starship's Imminent Launch," is outfitted with a featured image of a spacecraft that looks nothing like Starship — or like any existing spacecraft, for that matter. Instead, it resembles science fiction-imagined vessels; think the "Star Wars" series' Millennium Falcon, or the Protector craft from the film "Galaxy Quest." There are no disclaimers to note the use of AI to create the image, nor is there a caveat to say that this isn't, in fact, what SpaceX's Starship actually looks like.
And the article itself is immensely weird.
Though it claims to be a countdown, it never actually says what time the launch is, where it will be, or provides any other relevant information. Instead, it waxes poetic about the launch as a concept, describing the idea of liftoff with a starry-eyed fan fiction sensibility. It never explains where the information is actually coming from, either; it doesn't cite other outlets or mention any sources.
"A low roar builds on the horizon, heralding the dawn of a new chapter in space exploration. The much-anticipated launch of the Starship, a marvel of modern engineering, edges closer, capturing the imagination of dreamers and doers alike," reads the article's opening paragraph. "As this colossal vessel prepares to touch the heavens, it carries with it the hopes of breaking through the boundaries of what was once deemed impossible."
In short, it isn't news. It's AI slop designed to game Google's algorithm.
Things unravel further at the byline. The article is attributed to an alleged person named "Sylvia Jordan," who's described in a lengthy bio as a "seasoned author and expert in emerging technologies and financial innovation." Jordan is also said to have a "Master's degree in Technology Management from Stanford University," and "combines a strong academic foundation with pragmatic insights drawn from her extensive career in the fintech sector." She's said to have "held pivotal roles" at a fintech company called "NextGen Finance."
But we were unable to find any Sylvia Jordan that matched that description. Jordan has no writing history beyond Science Magazine; there also doesn't appear to be any company called "NextGen Finance" with a record of an employee by that name. Stanford, meanwhile, doesn't even offer a master's degree in technology management.
The other article ranking in Google's Top Stories, titled "SpaceX Starship: A Fiery Setback Sparks Innovation and Resilience," is similarly bleak. Its featured image is a close-up image of a rocket that looks nothing like Starship supposedly exploding — it sort of just looks like it's taking off from a runway like an airplane? — and is complete with telltale AI artifacts, like a botched SpaxeX-ish logo that reads more like "SPPXCX." Again, there are no AI disclaimers on the image.
To be sure, there are plenty of real images of SpaceX spaceships exploding; at this point, SpaceX is as famous for its catastrophic Starship explosions as it is for its successful launches. That the webpage would instead feature an image like this without disclosure of AI use speaks in part to the site's heavy automation, as well as to its lack of editorial standards.
The article's text, meanwhile, is yet another odd blend of lauding, poetic praise for SpaceX that spins half-truths and blanket statements devoid of any real context, or really any information at all — you know, the thing that people using Google are probably looking for.
To wit: the article begins by declaring that "SpaceX's Starship recently faced a dramatic trial, soaring through azure Texas skies before the flight was suddenly halted by an alarming series of failures."
This is technically true! SpaceX's last Starship launch before Monday's delay, which took place in January, ended in a disastrous explosion, treating cruise-goers to an awesome-yet-terrifying light display over the Caribbean and littering Turks and Caicos with remnants of the craft. But this is just the latest Starship launch attempt that's ended in literal flames; the Science Magazine article, however, never actually clarifies which launch it's talking about. It fails to provide a date for the launch it's discussing, makes no note of where the explosion occurred, and never mentions the debris or where it ended up.
And then there's the author. This time around, the article is attributed to one "Kaleb Brown," who's described as a "distinguished author and thought leader in the realms of new technologies and financial technology " who "holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from the prestigious Morningside University."
Though business administration is a real degree at Morningside University, we again were unable to find a Kaleb Brown that matched the lengthy Science Magazine bio. (There's a Kaleb Brown who recently played football for the University of Iowa, and Morningside University is in Iowa. Maybe that's where Science Magazine's AI drew its hallucination?)
These are just two of several Science Magazine articles we found occupying coveted Google positions. A search for "Blue Ghost lunar lander," for example, referencing the US-based aerospace firm Firefly's successful landing of its historic lunar spacecraft, included more Science Magazine slop — including a fake image of a nonexistent version of the lander! — in Google's Top Stories, where it ranked alongside real journalism from CNN, Space.com, and Reuters.
A search for "Webb Telescope breakthrough" saw more Science Magazine slop snag the very top result in the News tab. Though the groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured many real and mindblowing images of our awe-inspiring cosmos, the article instead includes a strange, AI-generated rendition of the JWST.
Yet another search, this one for "plasma rocket," also returned a Science Magazine-generated story in the top results under the News tab, showcasing another faux image of an alleged spacecraft.
All of these stories were bylined by more sham authors with equally bogus bios, and are each characterized by similar issues: they offer no sources or citations, instead making sweeping, grandiose declarations about purported advancements while offering little to no data, context, or criticism.
Elsewhere in Science Magazine, we found the site pushing even more blatant misinformation, peddling bogus stories about SpaceX making breakthroughs in quantum-powered teleportation (it hasn't.) The site also fabricated an article about a nonexistent breakthrough in quantum computing at Columbia University, which it claimed was pioneered by a person named Stephen Coffey. There does appear to be a student at Columbia by that name, but there's no indication that his research has anything to do with quantum computing.
From a publisher's perspective, rubbish like this slipping into eyeball-driving Google slots is admittedly frustrating. Though pivots to subscription models and newsletter-based publishing formats are on the rise, click-based ad revenue is still a central pillar of the digital publishing industry — and Google, still the reigning monopolist of the search economy, remains at the heart of that model. Seeing cheap, churn-and-burn AI slop crowd out real, thoughtful writing and reporting, all the while holding visual rank — and thus, perceived legitimacy — in results alongside work from actual news outlets, is, in a word, bleak.
And from the view of a news consumer, as far as usefulness goes, this stuff serves no real purpose. All it does is muddle the information ecosystem, polluting the web with weird, low-quality text and fake imagery that absolutely no one needs. The point of real news is to provide consumers with factual reporting, analysis, and perspective. The point of this garbage? It only exists to cash in on clicks — and for a while, at least, it seemed to have worked, with the help of some images of fake spacecrafts.
But Science Magazine's days in the Google Sun might just be over. After we reached out to Google with questions about this story, we noticed that the faux magazine stopped surfacing in the tech giant's search results, even when we searched its headlines verbatim — suggesting that Google may have manually demoted the publisher in its search algorithms.
In a statement to Futurism, Google declined to comment on Science Magazine specifically, but said it does sometimes manually demote sites.
"Our policies prohibit producing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings — whether automation, humans or a combination are involved," a spokesperson for the company said in an emailed statement. "While we don't comment on actions taken against individual sites, when we identify violations of our policies, we take action, which may include manual removal. We go to great lengths to fight webspam in our search results, and 99 percent of Search visits are spam free."
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