ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews from Google: these AI interfaces have become an entry point to information… and brands. For communication and marketing departments, a question arises: what does the AI say about you, and how can you influence its responses?
By the numbers
58% of consumers have replaced traditional search engines with generative AI tools to learn about a product or service
(Capgemini Research Institute, 2025)
90-95% quotes produced by AI do not come from the brand’s website, but from media and evaluation platforms.
(McKinsey “New Front Door to the Internet”, 2025)
For twenty years, the battle for visibility was played out on a Google results page. The marketing work was known: position yourself on the right keywords, take care of your SEO, buy sponsored links. But since 2026, everything has changed.
The typed query leaves room for the question asked. And the answer is no longer a list of links to explore, but a synthetic text, who cites few sources and slice for the user.
You are no longer just referenced: you are described, summarized, recommended (or ignored) by a system of which, at first glance, you have no control over its operation or its sources.
At first glance only.
AI: a prescriber that you can influence?
When a prospect asks an AI “what is the best tool for…” or “what is brand X worth?” “, the response shapes their perception and purchasing intention before he even visits your site.
What is the risk if you do nothing? Your brand is poorly represented, or simply absent from the responses: you are losing a crucial opportunity for visibility. Worse still, AI
can offer wrong answersand relay false or outdated information about your brand on a large scale, without anyone having validated it.
Fortunately, it is possible to consolidate your presence where new purchasing intentions are formed: in the responses of AI conversations.
“The question is no longer whether your brand is well ranked, but whether it is well cited. » Cyndie Bettant, Communications Leader at Cision.
Good news: you hold all the cards
Influencing AI responses is not a technical feat and the practices are ultimately very close to the communication and marketing professions. Because these LLM models do not get their answers from nowhere: they rely heavily on editorial content.
Several studies (McKinsey, Cision, CapGemini) showed that theearned media (earned media coverage, as opposed to paid content) concentrates between 80% and 90% of citations. Conversely, purely advertising content is not (or very little) taken into account.
In other words: influencing AI means first of all influencing the media that feed them. That is to say the core business of media relations : build solid stories, place key messages, obtain credible coverage and increase the number of quotes on your news on the web, forums and social networks. This press relations and digital amplification work now has a double scope: the immediate impact, and the lasting imprint in the memory of AI models.
PR: the number 1 lever of GEO
Thus, the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) complements traditional SEO, to optimize your presence in generative engines. Its logic differs from that of classic SEO: where natural referencing aims for ranking on a query, GEO seeks to ensure that your brand is included, cited and correctly described within a response.
This is how media relations take on their full strength: the press coverage, clear, dated and sourced, is very readable for LLMs. Regular publications in recognized media and digital engagement around these articles (re)become at the heart of visibility strategies : AI rewards the repetition of a credible signal. And the media is logically the #1 source when it comes to journalistic reliability. Therefore, presence in authoritative publications in your sector matters just as much as the gross volume of coverage.
Understanding the sources that influence AI
You still need to know what the AI says about you and where these words come from. This is the blind spot of most current systems: we measure its press coverage, its traffic, its Google positions, and even its GEO, but rarely the sources which influence the responses of ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Of the AI monitoring solutions dedicated teams are emerging to fill this void, such as Cision AI Monitorwhich allows communication teams to monitor their visibility in AI engines, to compare themselves to their competitors model by model, but above all toidentify the media and journalists who have the most influence on the responses generated. There day beforethe historical skill of PR, extends to AI: detecting a toxic narrative before it spreads, spotting obsolete information, measuring the real effect of each action on its generative visibility.
Understanding its presence in AI engines is one thing, finding the right media and journalists to drive it is another. And that’s the whole point of a complete PR solution like Cision, which integrates your AI visibility.
5 reflexes for communication departments
- Audit your AI presence. With the right tools, discover your visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity and the questions your prospects are really asking. 2. Identify your sources of influence. Identify the media and journalists that the AI cites in your sector: they do not always match your usual press file. 3. Think about your content to be cited. Favor factual, structured and sourced formats: press releases, proprietary data, expert positions. 4. Play consistency. A signal repeated in credible media carries more weight than an isolated operation.
- Monitor continuously. Treat your AI visibility as an indicator in its own right, just like your media coverage.
Exist where the questions arise
You will have understood, your digital visibility is no longer just a position on a results page. It also plays out in the responses of artificial intelligence, where purchasing intentions are formed earlier and earlier.
Rethinking your visibility and influence strategy means stopping compartmentalizing SEO, press relations and data: we must now connect these digital levers to exist where your users now ask their questions.
Brands that engage in a real PR strategy to influence AI platforms will be rewarded not only with better visibility, but also with more complete and structured responses.
By Cyndie Bettant, Communications Leader at Cision.https://www.cision.fr/relations-medias/
