Your organisation’s reputation has always been shaped by what you say, what others say about you and what people experience when they interact with your brand. However, there’s a new player in the mix: artificial intelligence.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini about your organisation, they don’t necessarily get a list of links to explore and draw their own conclusions. They get a synthesised answer, assembled from information the AI model can access. That answer might influence whether someone trusts your business, considers your services or forms an opinion about your leadership before they’ve even visited your website.
This is where communicators need to start thinking differently about reputation management. While you can influence the information available about your organisation, you can’t directly control how AI interprets, combines and presents it.
Your digital footprint is becoming your AI reputation
Traditional search gave people a collection of information sources while AI tools increasingly do the interpretation for them, drawing on multiple sources to deliver a single response. Which is a distinction that really matters because instead of deciding which articles, websites or reviews to read, people may accept an AI-generated summary as their starting point. The information selected, the context provided and the details left out can all shape their perception of your organisation.
This emerging concept is often called synthetic reputation: the version of your reputation that AI models assemble and repeat when people ask questions about your brand, organisation or spokespeople.
The challenge is that this reputation isn't something your organisation has written or approved. It’s constructed from information available to the model, which means content published years ago could still influence how your organisation is represented today.
For communicators, reputation management can no longer stop at media coverage, social sentiment and search engine rankings. We also need to understand how our organisations appear in AI-generated answers.
Your owned content may be doing more heavy lifting than you think
For years, communications teams have invested significant effort in earning media coverage, securing visibility in search results and building brand awareness across multiple channels. Those activities still matter, but the growing influence of AI introduces another consideration: the quality, accessibility and structure of your own content.
Research conducted by Medianet into AI citations for Australian organisations found that AI models frequently drew on owned content, including corporate websites, newsrooms and blogs. The research also found that responses about some Australian retail banks were overwhelmingly positive, with positive sentiment recorded in 97% and 100% of responses for two leading banks respectively.
These findings suggest that the information organisations publish themselves can play a significant role in shaping how they appear in AI-generated answers.
Meaning: this creates an opportunity for communicators. Your website, media releases, FAQs, leadership commentary, blogs and other publicly available content can help establish the information AI models use when describing your organisation.
Now, we need to be mindful that simply publishing more content isn't the answer. The objective is to make sure the information available is useful, accurate, authoritative and easy to understand. Consider whether your website clearly explains what your organisation does, who it serves, what makes it different and how it responds to the questions people commonly ask. Well-structured FAQs, straightforward explanations and informative articles can make important information easier for people and AI tools to interpret.
Accessibility matters so if useful information sits behind registration forms or other barriers, it may be less accessible to AI systems. Review which content should be publicly available and whether the material that best explains your organisation can be readily accessed.
The content you published five years ago could still be shaping perceptions
Most communications teams spend their time looking forward - planning campaigns, preparing announcements, responding to emerging issues and developing content for the next big organisational priority. What we often don't have time for is looking backwards, yet historical content can continue to influence how an organisation is represented online. Old blog posts, outdated service descriptions, superseded policies and historical regulatory issues may still be publicly accessible and relevant to the way AI models construct answers.
The problem isn't necessarily that this content exists, though, it’s simply that historical information can be important for transparency, accountability and public understanding. The problem arises when that content is inaccurate, missing context or no longer reflects the organisation's current position. This is why communicators need to become content archivists as well as content creators.
Start by auditing your publicly accessible digital footprint. Review old website pages, media releases, blog articles, FAQs, leadership biographies and other material that might be used to describe your organisation. Check whether the information remains accurate, whether important context is missing and whether the content needs updating, consolidating or removing.
Don't automatically delete anything that reflects an uncomfortable moment in your organisation's history. We aren’t aiming to rewrite the past - just to ensure information is accurate, appropriately contextualised and not misleading. A disciplined content audit can help you identify gaps, reduce inconsistencies and make it easier for people to find a reliable account of who you are and what you do.
Reputation measurement needs to catch up with AI
If AI-generated answers are influencing how people understand organisations, communications teams need a way to assess how their brands appear in these environments. However, there's a risk of falling into the same trap we've seen with other digital metrics: measuring what's easy to count instead of what actually matters.
Tracking how often your organisation appears in AI responses might be interesting, but visibility alone doesn't tell you whether that exposure supports your communication objectives. A mention might be positive, negative, incomplete or irrelevant to the audience you're trying to reach.
Before investing in another dashboard, establish what you want to understand and why.
Are you concerned about whether AI tools accurately describe your services? Do you want to understand how your organisation compares with competitors? Are you monitoring how your leadership team is represented, which messages are repeated or whether outdated information is influencing responses? All of which requires a different approach.
Start with a small, repeatable measurement process. Select an AI platform or a limited number of platforms to examine, develop a consistent set of prompts based on the questions your audiences are likely to ask, and record the responses. Look for recurring themes, inaccuracies, sentiment, source citations and differences between your organisation and relevant competitors.
Repeat the process over time to identify patterns rather than drawing conclusions from a single response. AI outputs can vary, and the way models retrieve and interpret information changes. Treat your findings as directional evidence, not an absolute measure of reputation.
The Global Alliance for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, AMEC, has developed guidance on generative engine optimisation (GEO) measurement. Its Integrated Evaluation Framework is also a useful starting point for distinguishing communications activities and outputs from outcomes and organisational impact.
Ultimately, the point is to understand whether the way your organisation is represented supports the outcomes you're trying to achieve.
Traditional media visibility and AI visibility aren't the same thing
It's tempting to assume that an organisation with strong media coverage will automatically have a strong presence in AI-generated answers, but the relationship isn't necessarily that straightforward. Traditional media share of voice and visibility within AI-generated responses measure different things.
An organisation might receive substantial media coverage but have a relatively limited presence in AI answers, while another might have less traditional media visibility but feature more prominently in the responses generated by AI tools. This means communications teams need to be careful about using familiar measures as a proxy for performance in a different environment.
It also reinforces the importance of looking beyond one channel when assessing reputation. Media coverage, owned content, social platforms, search visibility and AI-generated answers each provide different perspectives on how an organisation is represented.
Understanding those differences can help communicators identify where their reputation is well established, where information is missing and where further investigation is needed.
The role of communicators is expanding, not disappearing
The rise of AI-generated answers doesn't make established communication principles less relevant. If anything, it makes them more important. Clear messaging, credible information, audience understanding and consistent communication remain fundamental. What's changing is the environment in which that information is discovered, interpreted and repeated.
Communicators are well placed to lead this work because it sits at the intersection of content, reputation, stakeholder understanding and measurement. It requires more than technical optimisation; it requires judgement about what information matters, what context audiences need and how the organisation should communicate its position honestly and clearly.
That means working with digital, marketing, media, legal and other relevant teams to improve content quality, review historical information and develop a more informed understanding of AI-generated representations. It also means accepting that we won't have complete control over the outcome. AI models are evolving, their information sources vary and their responses can change. No single tactic will guarantee that an organisation is represented exactly as it would like.
What communicators can control is the quality of the information they publish, the accuracy of the content they maintain, the questions they investigate and the evidence they use to guide decisions.
Your organisation's reputation has never been entirely within your control, but as AI becomes another way people discover and evaluate organisations, understanding your digital footprint is becoming an increasingly important part of managing it.
