AI Is Now Co‑Author of Your Brand Story (Whether You Like It or Not)
Imagine a consumer asking AI which whisky best fits their taste profile. The answer feels objective, smart, and neutral. But what if that answer is simply wrong?
That’s exactly what happened to drinks group Pernod Ricard. Research revealed that AI models were regularly misclassifying its brands. Ballantine’s—meant to be an accessible Scottish whisky for the mass market—was positioned by a popular AI model as a prestige product. Other brand attributes turned out to be incomplete or plainly incorrect.
This isn’t an edge case. A growing number of consumers use AI when making purchase decisions. According to YouGov, two‑thirds of Gen Z ask AI models for recommendations about brands. Instead of Googling, they ask questions like: “Which whisky fits my taste?” or “What’s a good pair of headphones for travel?”
And the answer they get isn’t shaped by your campaign—but by how AI understands your brand.
Your brand story is written by others
AI models build their understanding of brands primarily from existing sources: reviews, media coverage, Wikipedia, forums, and webshops. Not your website. Not your ads. Additional research even shows that brand websites are mainly treated by AI as places to buy, not as authoritative information sources.
In other words, your positioning, differentiation, and reputation are written by people who don’t work for you—and then repeated at scale by AI.
The problem of AI sameness
At the same time, many brands are also using AI to produce their own content. The result? Everything starts to look alike.
When everyone uses the same tools, we end up in a Sea of Sameness: interchangeable copy, similar visuals, identical claims. Brands may save money, but they lose character. And that’s dangerous, because AI thrives on patterns. What doesn’t stand out doesn’t get cited.
So on one side, brands lose control over how AI describes them. On the other, they reduce their own distinctiveness. The outcome is invisibility—for both AI and consumers.
AI will also place the order
And it doesn’t stop at recommendations. AI is steadily moving from advisor to buyer. Consumers increasingly ask AI agents not just to search and compare, but to complete the purchase: “Find a handmade gift under €50 and order it.”
Those agents don’t choose based on your brand film. They choose based on structured product data, reviews, availability, and price. If your information isn’t complete and machine‑readable, you simply don’t exist in that purchase journey.
What can you do?
- Check how AI describes your brand. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude the same questions your customers would. The answers can be surprising—and sometimes uncomfortable.
- Invest in written availability. Make sure your brand appears in reliable, independent sources AI trusts: media, trade publications, review platforms, Wikipedia.
- Build genuine distinctiveness. In a world flooded with AI‑generated content, originality becomes more valuable. Distinct brands receive more earned media, are cited more often, and stick better in people’s minds.
Because even in the AI era, recognition still matters. When a chatbot presents three options, the brand that feels familiar often wins—not because AI prefers it, but because the human brain does.
Conclusion
AI changes a lot—but not everything. What others say about you has always mattered more than what you say about yourself. The difference now is that a model is listening, summarizing, and advising.
The brands that win won’t just be the ones with the smartest AI tools. They’ll be the ones with the clearest strategy, the strongest positioning, and the most consistent story—exactly what brand building has been about for decades.
