The Impact of AI on Online Reputation Management

Whether it’s for your business or yourself, it’s time to get serious about mitigating the emerging risks of generative AI.

Like it or not, there’s much at stake for your reputation in the context of Google’s AI Overviews and Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools. In this article, we’ll dig into AI risks and what you can do about them. We’ll also consider the likely untapped opportunities AI offers you.

Along the way, we’ll share our AI philosophy and how our online reputation management (ORM) strategy helps clients begin influencing what AI tools are saying about them. 

The evolution of ORM and what it means for your brand

Brand reputation management and ORM in general is changing because AI is an emerging ‘channel’ where brands and individuals increasingly need to be present. Reputational presence used to be just how you were represented in Google Search and social media platforms. But modern ORM must now address a much wider environment that includes the AI tools that are surging in popularity. 

If your ORM provider isn’t up on the latest AI risks, generative engine optimization, and digital marketing trends, you’re now facing a vulnerability and a gap where AI-driven chaos reigns.

So how has ORM changed with AI in the mix? It’s grown denser, more interconnected, and more dependent on strategic content creation than ever before. 

And brands face a new uncertainty — how is AI impacting their online presence, how is AI eroding brand narrative control and downstream public perception?

A note on AI ORM tools

We’re going to be honest, this article isn’t a list of ‘great AI ORM platforms’ because there isn’t one on the market. Just like so-called reputation management software, AI reputation management tools cannot deliver the reputational wins that a dedicated team can. There is no one-and-done solution for high-profile brand reputation management services.

What AI integrations can do is reveal the reputational landscape, find hidden opportunities and vulnerabilities, support sentiment analysis, deploy key metrics, automate aspects of ORM, and help reputation managers iterate their strategy. 

At least that’s what our patented online brand management technology does.

AI’s inherent reputational risks

There are several unique characteristics of AI, especially ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, and other ‘search engine’ style platforms, that make them specifically capable of reputational harm. 

There are three main themes:

1. Unprecedented reach

From its recent beginnings, generative AI has astounded tech thought leaders in its sheer speed of evolution, billions of dollars of investment, and rapid ascent in adoption.

Literally billions of eyes and countless millions of users are now exposed to or actively using AI. And much of that is in the search engine results context. 

Then consider that AI Overviews answers appear in a substantial percentage of Google’s 8.5 billion daily searches. 

There’s nothing else with numbers like this and right now AI is telling the masses all about you and your brand. This level of reach sets the stage for damaging impacts on brand image, brand perception, and ‌business reputation.

2. The rival storyteller

Here’s a great metaphor for generative AI tools in the brand and personal narrative context. Think of AI as a rival storyteller — another voice (among many) vying for attention and diluting your narrative. 

When a user Googles you or your brand, or turns to Gemini to ask questions, the AI tools produce an answer. But that answer depends upon what’s out there online. Many brands lack substantial content or cannot strategically manage these answers and that’s how you quickly lose your reputation and story to AI.

That’s why it’s so important to have an ORM strategy that is proactive, building out a digital landscape filled with relevant, current, correct, and factual content you own and can leverage. It’s always been important but artificial intelligence just highlights ORM even more.

3. Reputational erosion

Now take those AI answers plus any other controversial, high-profile issues and let them go for months, years, even decades. What happens? Your reputation is eroded like rocks at the base of a waterfall.

But unlike a waterfall, there’s nothing magnificent about reputational damage. Your brand, your career, and your ability to lead depend on your standing.

If you’re in crisis management mode, facing a negative news cycle, or dealing with other public relations difficulties, AI can pick up on this and run with it. 

AI can deliver millions of answers that cause more harm, exacerbate the controversy, or unintentionally keep it top of mind with your audience.

The secret is that you can influence the story AI is telling, win back control, and turn these rival storytellers into brand narrative allies.

AI’s reputational upside

Let’s take a look at the benefits a proactive approach to AI offers. 

First, a few distinctions. There are two different angles on AI. One is using AI-powered technology for ORM and the other is leveraging strategies to influence AI itself. We do both but let’s start with the brand ally concept.

AI as a brand ally

The opposite of the rival storyteller is what we call the AI brand narrative ally. Brands have a choice about which they want, a friend or a foe. When you inform AI about your brand story you’re helping it understand you. 

The more positive content you create and iterate online, the more likely AI is to see it and incorporate it into its answers. You can loosely consider these as ‘sources’ for the AI. 

If you own most of the content about your brand, you influence the AI story with your preferred one. If not, you’re at the mercy of the AI, which will draw from mostly uncontrollable sources.

The goal and the opportunity is to build your content so it eventually makes up the majority of AI’s ‘sources’ — that’s what it means to achieve controllability. AI will get your story right in front of billions of eyes and help build trust. That’s how you convert a rival into an ally.

Adapting to the AI-driven ORM evolution

So what should you do about ORM with the advent of AI? The first step is to embrace the fact that AI is here to stay and requires brands and individuals to add it to their reputational priorities. 

The second is to adopt a strategy that goes beyond your organic search presence, impacting AI as well. It’s called generative engine optimization (GEO) and should be part of a well-rounded online brand management strategy.

GEO builds your online assets to create narrative-friendly content that informs AI. As we said above, when you create and optimize content at scale it’s far more likely that AI uses it to generate an answer. 

Over time, control is achieved but you begin by assessing the entire online space and all the AI platforms to see where you stand, detect the gaps, and start executing on asset optimization. 

The great news is that the work you do on traditional ORM supports your AI narrative. GEO brings in the technology and strategy alignment.

Learn more about our AI-inclusive ORM solutions.