Is Google Actually Hating on My AI Content, or Am I Just Cooked?

Ok so I built an AI-powered SEO tool for trades businesses (roofers, HVAC, plumbers, etc). Pipeline generates 4-5 articles a day via OpenAI. 3 months in and the numbers are... humbling: 168 impressions, 3 clicks, avg position 65.4. Technically inching up from 73 a few weeks ago, so not zero progress, but at this rate I'll hit page 1 sometime after I retire.

Genuinely can't tell if this is just new-domain-nobody-trusts-you-yet purgatory, or if Google specifically has beef with AI content and is quietly throttling me.

What I've already fixed so it's not user error:

Duplicate content clusters (found and merged a bunch, manually and with an agent I built lol)
Missing titles, missing CTAs, across 130+ articles
Actually submitting to the Indexing API, not just praying
Backlinks via directories, HARO, Reddit — slow grind but it's something

What's living rent-free in my head:

Google SAYS "helpful content regardless of how it's made" but the vibes from other builders online are giving "AI content sits in AI jail until your domain proves itself" — no idea if that's real or cope
My articles are technically correct and well-structured but I genuinely don't know if they read as mid to an actual human. Might matter way more than the AI-vs-human debate tbh

So real question for anyone who's actually shipped AI content at scale:

Has your AI content specifically gotten stuck, separate from normal "new site nobody trusts you" struggles? Or is it always just the domain-age thing?
If you're also generating fast (not hand-editing every article), what actually worked to make it not read generic — without killing the speed?

Trying to figure out if I'm solving the wrong problem rn, someone please save me from myself