Are automated applications? E.g. a bot applies for ten thousand roles at a job, this forcing manual labor to wade through noise?

I wonder if an unexpected consequence will be a return to word by mouth hiring and more nepotism.

I wonder the same.

Same applies to all content on the internet, actually. If the search engine cannot distinguish between AI-generated content and actual content (or good vs bad, but AI has the potential to generate a ton of bad content), then how do you find good websites?