Google to penalize poor (i.e. AI-generated) content

Google to penalize poor (i.e. AI-generated) content, aims to reduce prominence of poor content in search by 40% by mid-2024.

Google recently made a company blog post (March 5th) on how it will double down on it's policy of penalizing low-quality content. It's been aiming to tackle this "problem" since the rise of LLMs in 2022, but it says this March it will have a "core" update that will double-down on said efforts. Internal estimates say that reduction of this low-quality, unoriginal content in "search" results will be almost 40% (will see if they achieve it).

Secondary priorities also include going to crack down on site reputation abuse, giving site owners a two month grace period till May.

My opinion is that this isn't blatantly anti-AI, however, most low-quality content or articles generated happen to be AI-driven (even pre-LLM era), so logically Google is right to stay focused on this. "Search" is Google's bread & butter, and protecting it's MOAT there is ever-important, especially since there are ever-changing threats re: OpenAI, Perplexity, Bing.

Will Google be able to solve this "problem"? If so, how valuable would it be? Or does simple mitigation seem like the more probable route?