AI is describing your brand, make sure it's right

AI is becoming part of how people find, judge and understand brands. It is already shaping how information appears, how reputations form and how organisations show up in the moments where decisions are made. None of this replaces the fundamentals of brand management. It simply adds a new environment where those fundamentals now play out. 

In late November 2025, PRWeek highlighted in a webinar that AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT are now answering billions of queries directly. Those answers often replace the need to click through to a website. They pull from the content and signals that AI finds most reliable across the web, including press releases, earned media and other authoritative sources. These materials now influence whether a brand appears in AI-generated answers or stays invisible. 

This is not just a search question. It is a brand presence question. Multiple studies suggest that audiences are beginning to trust AI-provided answers as much as, or sometimes more than, the underlying articles or posts that feed them. In that world, reputation comes from whether AI recommends, cites or explains an organisation in a credible way. 

These dynamics have been coming through clearly in our brand workshops. When we show clients what generative AI currently says about them, the reactions are usually a mix of interest and concern. Many have never checked this before. It is not something most leadership teams have considered part of brand management. Seeing it for the first time often shifts their mindset. They start asking where AI is pulling information from, how accurate it is and whether it matches how they describe themselves. 

One of the strongest messages from the PRWeek webinar is that AI relies heavily on earned media and trusted sources. These include reputable news outlets, expert commentary, press coverage and structured content from authoritative domains. These sources act as anchors in an AI system’s understanding of a brand. When they are consistent and aligned to an organisation’s positioning, AI has more reliable evidence to work with. When they are sparse or contradictory (or occasionally inaccurate), AI forms a weaker or more fragmented picture.  

Sarah Salter from WPP summed this up clearly in the webinar. She explained that websites are no longer “shop windows”. They now act more like stock rooms filled with messaging, articles and content pieces that large language models (LLMs) use to build a picture of a brand. What matters most is the unified tone and language across those materials. That’s what helps AI recognise a brand’s single authoritative voice. It’s not about pushing out more marketing messages. It’s about creating an ecosystem of verifiable truth around the brand. 

This does not mean brand teams now need to become technical specialists in AI optimisation. Instead, it means brand management is broadening. PR, comms, digital and leadership teams each carry signals into the world that AI will later collect, interpret and reuse. These signals already exist in every press release, every article, every piece of structured content and every expert comment. AI simply connects them more visibly than before. 

A similar point is being made in wider industry analysis. Forbes explains that AI systems do not just rank pages. They form a composite understanding of who an organisation is, what it does and why it matters. They look for clarity, credibility and consistent information across multiple independent sources. This mirrors what strong brand management has always aimed to achieve. The difference now is that AI systems make the results of that work more immediate and more transparent. 

As AI becomes part of everyday discovery, brand management becomes even more important. It becomes the discipline that ensures all your signals fit together in a way that feels accurate, credible and coherent. For brand, comms and digital leaders, this is not a moment to lose control of the narrative. It is a moment to take ownership of it through the same brand fundamentals, applied to a broader landscape. 

AI is not rewriting your brand. It is simply showing how all your signals fit together.