AI Is Talking About You Behind Your Back: Why Owning Your Narrative Matters More Than Ever

By Lauren Regan.

For years, marketers and digital comms specialists have obsessed over search rankings. How do we get to page one? How do we win more clicks? How do we outperform competitors on Google? It’s always been seen as a bit of a dark art - but in recent years, AI has changed the rules again. 

Increasingly, people aren't scrolling through pages of search results in order to find the information that they need. They're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity a question and receiving a single, synthesised answer collated from all of the data points that these platforms can find about you online. 

Our behaviour has quietly shifted, and without realising it, I’ve changed how I do things too.

Whether I'm researching the best outfits to wear for a city break in Rome, looking for recommendations for places to eat in a new town, comparing products (my new Shark hoover is excellent, thanks ChatGPT) or gathering sources to research a complex topic - my first instinct is increasingly to ask an AI tool rather than open a search engine. I'm not alone; millions of people are beginning to adopt the same behaviour because it feels faster, easier and more intuitive, and that should be a wake-up call for brands.

In an AI-powered world, the battle is no longer simply about visibility, it’s about narrative - and more importantly, who owns it. 

The question isn't whether your company appears in search results. It's whether AI understands who you are, what you stand for and why you matter.

That story is being built from thousands of signals across the internet - whether that is your own website and social platforms or external touchpoints like media coverage, industry commentary, award wins, reviews, case studies or thought leadership pieces. 

The conversations other people are having about your brand are intertwining with the story you are telling, creating a new narrative that AI platforms are serving up on a plate to increasing numbers of users. 

In other words, the very things PR has always focused on are now more important than ever  - do people know you, do they understand your story, and how can you control the narrative? 

For years, some organisations have viewed PR as the "soft" discipline sitting alongside the more measurable worlds of SEO and digital marketing. Yet as AI search becomes mainstream, we're seeing a fascinating reversal. The very things that make a brand credible to a human are increasingly the things that make it credible to a machine.

Research and commentary across the communications industry increasingly point to the growing influence of earned media and third-party validation in shaping how AI models understand brands. AI systems don't just rely on a company's website; they build understanding by drawing information from multiple sources and looking for consistency across them.

That shouldn't really surprise us - just like humans, AI models don't trust what brands say about themselves in isolation.

Just like your audience understands that you are obviously going to say that you are great, large-scale language models do exactly the same. They look for corroboration, consistency and for evidence. A company can publish endless claims about being innovative, sustainable or customer-focused, but if nobody else is talking about those things, why should an AI model repeat them?

The brands that will win in the next era of search are the brands creating enough credible signals for AI to confidently tell their story, and that creates a significant challenge in how we talk about our organisations. 

Many businesses don't consistently tell their story or have a cohesive narrative. 

The website is written by one team, social media managed by someone else, press coverage that happens sporadically, maybe by an agency and the leadership team works on a three-year strategy that isn’t widely shared around the team. Then we wonder why AI struggles to describe what makes us different or relevant, why what is spit out at the other end of an AI search is a bit…bland. 

The reality is that AI is becoming the world's largest aggregator, not just of information, but of reputation.

It is constantly collecting information, comparing sources and building its own version of the truth, and if you're not actively shaping that information ecosystem, somebody else will, or AI will simply “hallucinate” and fill in the gaps itself.

Historically, organisations could afford to be passive. If they weren't generating media coverage or publishing thought leadership, they were simply absent from the conversation, but today that absence creates ambiguity.

When someone asks an AI tool to recommend the leading businesses in a sector, identify experts on a particular issue or explain who a company is and what it does, the system will produce an answer regardless. It won't stop and say, "There isn't enough information available."

Instead, it will build a picture from whatever information it can find, and you have to show up in order to shape that picture.

The hill that I will die on is that strategic storytelling has become one of the most important business disciplines of the next decade. 

It’s not a marketing buzzword any more; storytelling as a strategic asset that we need to get right. 

The organisations that consistently share expertise, contribute meaningful commentary, publish original research, champion customer success stories and build visible leadership profiles are creating the raw material that AI systems rely upon.

They're not simply generating coverage, they're teaching the internet who they are.

Every interview, opinion piece, podcast appearance, conference speech and customer story adds another layer to that understanding, and every piece of content helps establish authority and strengthen trust, and trust is becoming one of the most valuable currencies in the AI era.

Think about how we evaluate information ourselves - if one person tells us something, we might believe it, but if ten respected people independently tell us the same thing, we are far more likely to accept it as true.

AI models operate in a surprisingly similar way. They look for recurring themes and patterns across multiple sources, and they assess consistency. They seek signals that indicate authority and expertise which is why public relations is uniquely positioned to help organisations navigate this shift.

Good PR has never been about generating noise; it has always been about creating credibility.

The best communications professionals understand that audiences don't want endless self-promotion. They want useful information, authentic perspectives and stories that help them make sense of the world around them and the same principle increasingly applies to AI.

If your organisation is regularly contributing valuable insights to industry discussions, sharing expertise and building a track record of trusted commentary, those signals become part of the broader digital footprint AI systems use to understand your brand.

For smaller businesses, this presents a significant opportunity. For years, large organisations could dominate search through vast marketing budgets and sophisticated digital infrastructure. AI search has the potential to level the playing field.

A smaller company with a strong reputation, visible leadership team and consistent media presence may be able to compete far more effectively than before.

If an AI model repeatedly encounters insightful commentary from a founder, sees their expertise referenced in reputable publications and finds evidence of successful client outcomes, that organisation begins to build authority regardless of its size.

That's good news for businesses willing to invest in thought leadership and storytelling, as it means influence is no longer determined solely by advertising spend, rather it is determined by the quality and consistency of the narrative you build.

Make no mistake, AI search is not simply changing how information is found; it is changing how organisations are understood.

The future belongs to brands that understand visibility is no longer just about being found; it’s about being understood and in a world where AI is increasingly telling your story on your behalf, having a firm grip on your narrative isn't a communications nice-to-have; it's a business necessity.

Remember, if you don't tell your story, somebody - or something - else will.

Lauren Regan is the founder and creative director of MOLE, a brand storytelling and PR consultancy.

Crafting a meaningful brand story is within reach for every organisation. MOLE works with businesses in the UK and Canada to find their voice, tell their stories, and shape their future. To speak to Lauren about your organisations ambitions, reach out on lauren@weraremole.com