When AI Becomes Your Spokesperson: What Will It Say About Your Brand?
Not long ago, your brand's "digital business card" was your Google search results. Then it shifted to curated Instagram feeds, Glassdoor reviews, and media coverage. But in 2025, reputation has a new gatekeeper: artificial intelligence.
When a journalist, policymaker, investor, or potential hire asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or another AI tool about your company, the answer they get may no longer come from your website or press release. It comes from what AI believes about you—and that belief is formed by what one expert calls the Algorithmic Trinity:
The Creative Memory (LLM): Conversational and persuasive, but can be inaccurate or hallucinate.
The Encyclopaedia (Knowledge Graph): Structured data scraped from official sources and treated as fact.
The Window to the Present (Search Index): Real-time information from current media and web activity.
If these three don’t align, AI makes assumptions. And those assumptions can misinform users, cost deals, tarnish employer branding, and erode stakeholder trust.
Why This Is a Communications Crisis
This isn’t just an SEO problem. It’s a reputation management imperative. And it affects every corner of modern communications:
Crisis Comms: AI can misreport or amplify misinformation. Are you prepared to correct the media and the machines?
Employer Branding: ChatGPT might describe your company using outdated Glassdoor reviews or inaccurate leadership info.
Investor Relations: Imagine a potential funder receiving AI-generated summaries with inconsistent revenue figures.
Public Affairs: Policymakers now rely on AI briefings. If your Knowledge Graph data is missing or wrong, your voice won't be heard.
PR leaders must now become algorithm whisperers, shaping how their brand is interpreted by both people and machines.
How to Educate the Algorithm
Just as we once learned to optimize for journalists and search engines, we now must speak to AI systems directly. That means:
Structured Brand Facts: Ensure consistent, crawlable information across databases like Wikipedia, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn.
Credibility Signals: Secure earned media, partnerships, awards, and third-party recognition that language models use to assess authority.
Real-Time Content: Feed the web with regular, expert content to keep the search index fresh and relevant.
PR and comms teams must manage not only the story, but the infrastructure that teaches AI to tell it.
From Brand Guardians to Narrative Engineers
At United Partners, we believe the role of communicators is evolving fast. We are no longer just storytelling professionals. We are data-informed narrative engineers, shaping perception in both the human and machine-readable worlds.
Leaving your reputation up to AI guesswork is not a strategy. It’s a risk. And in this new age, algorithmic reputation management belongs in every PR strategy deck.
Ready to Shape Your Brand's Algorithmic Reputation?
If you’re a Communications Director, Digital Lead, or Agency Head looking to protect your brand in the AI era, we’re here to help. United Partners works across markets to ensure your story is clear, consistent, and machine-readable.
Let’s make sure the future of AI is telling your version of the story.
