For the better part of a decade, much of the marketing advice out there has been consistent. Build your audience, own your channels, create content, invest in SEO, develop a smart media plan, publish regularly. None of that advice is wrong. In fact, most of it still applies.
But the rise of AI is highlighting a somewhat uncomfortable truth: the internet has always trusted third-party validation more than self-promotion, AI is simply making that reality harder to ignore.
A recent study from Muck Rack's Generative Pulse analyzed more than 25 million citations across leading AI platforms. To me (and all of my PR friends on LinkedIn), one statistic stood out: 84 per cent of the sources cited by AI systems came from earned media.
For many of us, this isn't exactly a shocking discovery. Public relations has always been built on the idea that third-party validation carries more weight than self-promotion. It's better when another kid calls you cool than going around showing off your new light-up sneakers on the playground.
What excites me is that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude seem to agree.
As people increasingly turn to AI for everything from dinner ideas to software recommendations, these systems are drawing from a broad ecosystem of information to form their responses. And that ecosystem places significant value on journalism, expert commentary, and independent sources. AI isn't just reading your website. It's reading everything else.
The Return of a Familiar Idea
For years, PR and marketing have often been treated as separate disciplines with separate objectives. Marketing drives awareness and demand. PR builds reputation and credibility. In practice, the distinction has never been quite that clean, which is one of the reasons I've always enjoyed being a hybrid that works across both disciplines.
The strongest brands have always understood that visibility and credibility work together. A compelling ad campaign might get someone's attention. A respected third party source helps convince them you're worth paying attention to.
When a large language model is asked about your company, your industry or your expertise, it isn't evaluating your latest campaign in isolation. It's looking for signals. Who talks about you? Where are you cited? What evidence exists beyond your own channels? Is there a broader body of information that supports the claims you're making?
Those are fundamentally reputation questions. And they happen to be questions that public relations has been helping organizations answer for decades.
What This Means for Organizations
There's a temptation whenever a new technology emerges to search for entirely new rules, but this may be a case where the opposite is true.
The organizations best positioned for our AI driven future are often the ones doing things they've always been told to do:
And while this new research has me way too excited, it doesn't mean AI visibility suddenly belongs exclusively to PR teams.
We know that AI systems don't rely solely on earned media. They pull information from a wide range of sources, including company websites, blogs, industry publications, podcasts, research reports, forums, and social platforms. A well-researched article on your website may be just as valuable as a media mention in the right context.
What's becoming clear, however, is that AI rewards credibility.
The question organizations should be asking isn't: how do we get AI to talk about us? It's: What information exists about us for AI to find?
If the only answer is your website, you're asking ChatGPT, and potential customers, to take your word for it.
The organizations that stand out will be those that create a broader footprint of trust: media coverage, expert commentary, thought leadership, original research, speaking engagements, industry participation, and useful content that demonstrates your expertise.
For years, organizations could think of public relations primarily as a reputation-building exercise. Today, it's becoming something more. It's part of how organizations are discovered, understood, and represented in an increasingly Claude-reliant world.
Trust Still Wins
I can’t help but laugh at the irony in all of this. At a moment when businesses are racing to automate content creation and flood the internet with AI-generated material, one of the strongest signals AI appears to value is independent credibility.
Technology has changed dramatically over the last decade. The fundamentals of trust haven't changed nearly as much. If anything, AI is reinforcing a lesson communicators have known all along: credibility isn't claimed, it's earned.
