For most of my career, public relations had a fairly clear output. A company wanted to be known for something, so we developed a story, found the right journalists, secured interviews or commentary, and tried to place that story in credible media. The publication itself was an important result.

That has not disappeared. But I think something fundamental is changing around it.

Today, a potential customer, investor, journalist, or partner may learn about a company without ever starting on its website or opening a traditional search result. They may simply ask ChatGPT which companies lead a category, ask Perplexity what a startup is known for, use Google AI to identify experts on a particular problem, or ask Copilot to compare one company with another.

Increasingly, the answer itself becomes the first impression.

That means communications teams now need to think beyond the traditional question, “Did we get coverage?” There is another question emerging: What does the wider information environment say about us when AI tries to explain who we are?

AI Does Not See Your Company the Way You Do

Inside a company, positioning can feel obvious. The leadership team knows why the product is different. The founder knows the problem better than almost anyone. Marketing has carefully crafted the website, and sales understands which competitors matter.

But that does not mean the outside world sees the company the same way. And it certainly does not mean an AI system does.

A company may describe itself as a leader in a particular category while the rest of the web barely connects it with that category at all. Its founder may have deep expertise, but almost no public material associates that person with the problem they understand. Its strongest proof points may live inside sales decks, customer calls, or internal research that public search and AI systems cannot access.

Meanwhile, a competitor with a weaker product but a stronger public information footprint may be much easier to identify, describe, and recommend.

This is where the conversation around AI visibility becomes relevant to communications. The term GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is becoming more common, and an industry is emerging around helping companies understand how they appear in AI-generated answers.

But I do not think GEO should be treated simply as a new version of SEO. For many technology companies, it is also a reputation and communications problem.

Consider the difference between two situations.

A cybersecurity company writes on its own website that it is a leading platform for mid-market businesses. That is positioning, and positioning matters. But it is still the company making a claim about itself.

Now imagine that over the following year, industry publications interview its founder about mid-market security, journalists cite the company's research, executives comment on major security incidents, and respected outlets repeatedly mention the company in the same context.

The company is no longer the only source making the association. The wider web begins to reinforce it.

That distinction has always mattered for reputation. I believe it becomes even more important in an environment where AI systems retrieve, compare, and synthesize information from multiple public sources.

A credible media placement therefore has a potentially longer life than the day it is published. It can reach readers directly, appear in search, help another journalist researching the same subject months later, reinforce an association between a company and a category, and potentially become part of the information AI systems retrieve when constructing an answer.

This does not mean that one article will suddenly make a brand appear in ChatGPT. The relationship is not that simple, and nobody should promise that it is.

But it does change the way I think about the value of earned media.

Coverage is no longer only an endpoint. It can become part of the information infrastructure around a brand.

Founder Expertise May Be Even More Valuable

This becomes particularly interesting when we look at founders.

Company news is finite. A funding round happens once. A product launch has a short news cycle. A major partnership may generate attention for a few days and then disappear from the conversation.

Expertise works differently.

The market changes constantly. New AI models appear, cybersecurity incidents happen, regulations change, customer behavior shifts, competitors launch products, and new data emerges. Every one of those developments creates an opportunity for someone with real expertise to explain what is happening and what it means.

A cybersecurity founder can interpret a major breach. An AI founder can explain what a new model changes for a particular industry. A fintech founder can put a regulatory decision into context. An enterprise software founder can explain why an established workflow is becoming obsolete.

Over time, those contributions create something more durable than a series of announcements. They create an association between a person and a problem.

This is why I believe founder visibility and AI visibility will increasingly overlap.

If a founder consistently appears across credible sources discussing a particular market issue, the public web becomes clearer about what that person knows. That matters to journalists looking for sources, customers evaluating expertise, investors researching a category, and increasingly to AI-powered discovery systems as well.

The Wrong Response Is to Produce More Content

Whenever a new discovery channel appears, the first instinct is often volume. Publish more articles. Create more landing pages. Repeat more keywords. Generate more content around every possible query.

I think that is the wrong lesson.

AI systems do not make weak positioning stronger simply because it has been repeated fifty times. If a company is unclear about what it wants to be known for, producing more content can simply distribute that confusion more widely.

The starting point should still be positioning.

A technology company should decide which three or four ideas genuinely matter to its business. It should know which market shift it understands particularly well, which problem it wants to become associated with, what its founder can explain better than most people in the category, and what evidence it can contribute that does not already exist.

Once those territories are clear, communications becomes much more focused. Research can support them. Founder commentary can reinforce them. Media outreach can connect them with relevant news. Contributed articles can develop the argument further, while owned content can make the underlying evidence accessible.

The objective is not to flood the internet.

It is to create consistent, credible evidence around a small number of strategically important ideas.

AI Visibility Should Be Measured, but Carefully

There is another reason communications teams should pay attention to this space: AI visibility is becoming more measurable.

It is now possible to monitor how brands appear across a repeatable set of AI queries, compare their visibility with competitors, review which sources are being cited, and track changes over time. Search platforms are also beginning to give publishers more information about how their content participates in AI-powered experiences.

Google has already moved in this direction by introducing Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, giving publishers more visibility into how their content appears across AI-powered search experiences.

But I would be careful with the language of “rankings.”

There is no single universal ChatGPT position equivalent to a traditional Google ranking. Answers can change depending on the model, wording of the prompt, date, location, user context, available sources, and product version.

That is why I prefer the term observed AI visibility.

The useful question is not, “Are we number three in ChatGPT?” The better question is whether, across a stable set of strategically important prompts, a company is becoming easier to find, more accurately described, and more consistently associated with the topics it wants to own.

That is a much more defensible way to measure change.

This Changes How I Think About PR Measurement

Traditional PR reporting has focused heavily on outputs: articles published, interviews secured, executive quotes, media reach, backlinks, and sentiment. Those metrics still matter, but I think technology communications programs increasingly need a second layer.

After a series of media placements, I also want to know whether the company's broader information footprint has changed: whether the brand appears more consistently around the right category, whether the founder is associated with the right expertise, whether AI-generated descriptions are becoming more accurate, and whether credible third-party sources are beginning to shape those answers.

This creates an interesting evolution in PR measurement.

The goal is no longer simply to report that an article appeared. It is to understand whether communications are helping establish what the company becomes known for.

That is a more strategic question, and it brings PR much closer to positioning, reputation, search, and business development.

GEO Should Not Become Another Marketing Shortcut

There is already a lot of aggressive language around GEO. Companies promise to “rank brands in ChatGPT,” guarantee citations, or control AI recommendations.

I am skeptical of those promises.

PR professionals do not control journalists. SEO professionals do not control Google. And GEO consultants do not control large language models.

The more credible opportunity is less dramatic and, in my view, more valuable.

We can improve the information AI systems have available. We can make a company's positioning clearer, create original evidence, develop founder expertise, earn credible media coverage, improve consistency across the public web, and make important content easier to discover and understand.

Then we can measure whether the company's visibility and representation change over time.

That is not an algorithm hack.

It is reputation building adapted to a new discovery environment.

PR Is Moving From Coverage to Discoverability

I do not believe GEO replaces PR, and I do not believe AI visibility replaces SEO.

They are beginning to overlap.

SEO helps information become discoverable. PR helps information become credible. Founder visibility gives that information a human source of expertise. AI systems increasingly sit on top of all three.

That leads me to a simple way of thinking about the evolution of technology communications:

Positioning → Expertise → Earned Media → Credible Public Sources → Search and AI Discovery

There is no guarantee that one step automatically causes the next. But the direction matters.

For years, the PR industry has asked whether a company was being talked about. In the AI era, I think we will increasingly ask something more demanding:

Does the wider information environment understand what this company — and its founder — should be known for?

Because the next competitive advantage may not simply be getting mentioned.

It may be becoming part of the answer.