Dr. Lydia Prexl

Reputation is increasingly shaped by what AI systems “know” about companies. AI-based search systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI don’t simply collect information; they synthesize opinions, weigh content, and thus actively influence public discourse. For communications professionals, this means that simply measuring visibility in AI models is not enough. What matters most is how a company is portrayed in AI responses—in what tone, with what level of credibility, and with what associations.

Reputation is increasingly being created in AI responses. Language models bundle public discourse, categorize it and return it as seemingly objective knowledge. For communication managers, this means that they not only have to observe what is said about a company – but also what AI makes of it.

More and more people are no longer using traditional search engines to find information, but are instead relying on the answers provided by AI language models (LLMs). However, these work in a fundamentally different way to Google & Co.: they do not link to individual websites, but summarize information from numerous sources and provide an interpreted answer. This means that an AI answer is not just information, but always also an interpretation, and it is precisely this that is increasingly shaping the perception of companies, brands and topics.