AI systems reinforce traditional media's role in corporate reputation

Large language models are emerging as both an opportunity and risk to corporate reputation, but earned and owned media are the best means of management.

How does your organisation show up in an AI large language model? It’s a question top that is top of mind for corporate affairs and communication directors.

AI systems have the potential to disrupt reputation in the same way as digital media and search engines have done over the past 25 years. It’s an emerging form of media that is already actively used in both a business and consumer context for research and insight.

Hard Numbers, a public relations agency focused on the finance and technology sectors, has taken one of the first looks at AI's impact on corporate reputation and how corporate communications directors are responding to this emerging area of risk and opportunity.

Its report Coverage to Capital: AI and Reputation suggests that AI doesn’t disrupt traditional media dynamics so much as reinforce them while also creating new opportunities and challenges for reputation management.

The public relations firm analysed GPT-4's responses about quality, trust, innovation and value across Forbes' top 100 brands, tracking and categorising all cited sources.

It found that traditional media dominates AI-generated content about organisations, challenging assumptions about the disruptive impact of AI on the media landscape. This effect is particularly strong when AI systems assess an organisation's trustworthiness, validate its claims about value and evaluate market positioning.


It identified the following sources as driving LLM responses.

Editorial media: 61%
Owned media: 44%
Customer review / ratings websites: 10%
Analyst reports: 10%
Industry awards / lists: 8%
Books: 2%
Academic studies: 1%
Social media: <1%


Earned and owned media dominate AI influence

While earned media remains the dominant source of influence, AI systems places a surprising level of trust in corporate communications and owned media channels, particularly around claims of innovation and technical capability.  Social media has almost no impact whatsoever.

Hard Numbers has also sought the perspective of communications leaders at organisations, including the British Business Bank, Lenovo, Rio Tinto, Vodafone and the UK Government Communication Service, to understand how they are responding to this challenge. 

LLMs rely on earned and owned media communications to build knowledge about organisations. However, unlike journalists who apply critical analysis, these systems cannot form independent critical perspectives.

Navity and lack of critical analysis

Hard Numbers' research shows that LLMs avoid negative assessments and tend towards neutral or positive interpretations of corporate behaviour and performance. This tendency was initially dismissed as a "hallucination" - the AI phenomenon of generating plausible but inaccurate information, however this analysis shows the pattern is more nuanced.

While the systematic bias towards a positive perspective may raise concerns about the societal role of critical journalism, it also presents a strategic opportunity for corporate communicators to shape an organisation’s narrative through authoritative earned and owned content. 

AI responds to SEO best practice

The research uncovers a strong correlation between positive AI perception and digital content that follows established technical best practices, such as clear structure, consistent metadata, and authoritative linking. This finding has significant implications for how organisations approach their digital content strategy and technical optimisation.

As AI is reshaping how information is processed, distributed and interpreted, this analysis provides important insights into its impact on organisational reputation. Understanding these dynamics will be important for corporate communicators to develop effective digital strategies for an AI-augmented future.

I support Hard Numbers as a non executive director and wrote the foreword to the report.

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