Is it possible that the nature of deep learning completely negates SEO? I think SEO will be reinfected by OpenAI intentionally rather than it being a cat and mouse game.
At least it seems likely to be more expensive for attackers than the last iteration of the spam arms race. Whether or to what extent search quality is actually undermined by spammers vs Google themselves is a matter for some debate anyway
In summary McDonalds is better if you are looking for something quick or a main brand but Burger King is the best in terms of quality.
No, though it does provide something like security through obscurity, in that the models still rely on search engines to locate sources to rely on for detailed answers, but the actual search engine being used is not itself publicly exposed, so while gaming its rankings may still have value (not to show ads, obviously, but to get your message into answers yielded by the AI tool), it is harder to assess how well you've done (and may take more pages as well as high ranking ones to be effective), because instead of looking at where you rank which you can do easily with a small number of tests or particular search queries, you have to test how well your message comes through in answers for realistic questions, which would take more queries and provide more ambiguous results. For highly motivated parties (especially for things like high-impact political propaganda around key issues) it may still be worth doing, though.
Sure propaganda is a thing but honestly it looks like the biggest propaganda issue is the propaganda the AI lab injects itself to steer the answer rather than what comes from the things the LLM learned directly.
The very ambitiousness of the project means that it necessarily must cede control, you can't have it both ways in answering all of the questions of the world and having tight control over the answers.