AI, Reputation and the New Rules of Trust
As AI rapidly reshapes how people search, evaluate and form opinions about companies and leaders, CommPRO’s May 20 Virtual Town Hall brought together an influential group of communications, reputation, marketing and AI leaders to examine what may become one of the defining business issues of the next decade: how trust, visibility and authority are being rebuilt in the age of generative AI.
Hosted by Fay Shapiro, the discussion featured perspectives from Sam Michelson, Five Blocks; Larry Weber, Racepoint Global; Linda Descano, Havas Red; Mirza Germovic, Edelman; Peter Duda, H-Advisors; Brendan Foo, Forward Global; Pat Ford, University of Florida; Stacey Cohen, Co-Communications; James Donnelly, M Booth; Kaitlyn Kotlowski, M Booth; Carol Merry, Fahlgren Mortine; and Simon Locke, Tauth Labs, among other senior communications, investor relations, marketing and AI leaders.
The conversation opened with a question from Shapiro that framed the rest of the discussion: “What happens when AI systems become the first place stakeholders turn for answers about a company or leader?” What followed was a candid and at times urgent conversation about how AI systems are rapidly becoming intermediaries between organizations and the public.
Michelson, CEO of Five Blocks, said the shift is already changing how companies are discovered and evaluated online. Rather than functioning like traditional search engines, he said AI systems are increasingly acting like advisors that can interpret context and recommend firms based on narrative fit. “We’re actually helping brands share a narrative,” Michelson said, adding that users are now “able to ask for a narrative” and receive nuanced recommendations in return.
Michelson described one interaction that immediately captured the attention of the group. A prospective client contacted Five Blocks after being referred by Claude AI. When Michelson’s team asked who had referred them, the answer was simple: “Claude.” The moment underscored one of the town hall’s central themes: organizations are no longer competing simply to be found online. Increasingly, they are competing to be recommended by AI systems that are shaping first impressions and influencing decisions.
Weber, founder of Racepoint Global, argued that this evolution may actually strengthen the importance of public relations and earned media rather than weaken it. “People that say PR’s dead are a little mistaken,” Weber said. He noted that “earned media sources represent about 90% of all generative AI searches,” making credible third-party content even more influential in shaping AI-generated responses.
Throughout the conversation, Weber repeatedly emphasized that communicators need to focus less on the AI platforms themselves and more on the information ecosystems feeding them. “I’m more interested in the data sources,” Weber said, pointing to platforms such as Wikipedia, Reddit and YouTube as increasingly influential inputs shaping AI narratives. Weber also revealed that senior corporate leaders are already deeply concerned about how AI systems portray their companies. “I’ve already had two Fortune 50 CEOs ask me how to control… the data that’s coming in from Claude, or in from OpenAI,” he said.
Later in the discussion, Weber described what he sees as the larger opportunity ahead for communicators who can adapt to the new environment. “We’re in the human technology era,” Weber said, comparing large language models to systems that still require ongoing training and guidance. “I also view a lot of the large language models like a dog… that we’re training,” he added. For Weber, the future belongs to communicators who understand how to shape these systems strategically and responsibly because “a trusted advisor is one that can train its information to have more impact in decision making.”
Descano, global chief integration officer at Havas Red, said AI is already forcing organizations to rethink content strategy and corporate messaging. “It is really changing content strategy for brands and businesses,” Descano said. According to Descano, AI systems reward clarity, specificity and validation over polished but generic corporate language. “You have to really speak short, declarative sentences, bring in those stats, weave in the third-party benchmarks and validations,” she said. She also stressed that communicators will need stronger business fluency if they want to remain influential strategic advisors. “We also need to up-level our teams so they can deliver more business-relevant strategies and contextualized communication results with and without AI,” Descano said.
Germovic, senior vice president, AI advisory at Edelman, described the current moment as “a new era of earned,” arguing that earned media has reemerged as a primary driver of AI visibility and authority. Germovic warned that many organizations are still relying on outdated measurement frameworks and said “referral traffic should never be the hero metric for AI search strategies. It should be visibility.” According to Germovic, companies that fail to understand how AI systems prioritize and synthesize information risk becoming invisible in the next era of search and discovery.
Duda, managing director at H-Advisors, argued that the communications industry is already operating inside this new AI reality whether organizations fully recognize it or not. “I would argue we’re there now,” Duda said. He noted that younger audiences increasingly begin research inside large language models instead of traditional search engines. “Five years ago, they said they would go Google it. Now they go to an LLM,” Duda said.
Duda also emphasized that AI systems themselves have become a new stakeholder environment requiring active management. “It’s another conduit, it’s a stakeholder, it’s something else. You have to actively manage it,” he said. At the same time, he cautioned that AI-driven tools could significantly disrupt parts of the communications business itself. “Some of the tools that are being developed are going to have huge implications for our business, going to be hugely disruptive,” Duda said.
Foo, managing partner at Forward Global, brought an investor relations and governance perspective to the discussion, warning that AI-driven decision-making could eventually influence shareholder activism and proxy battles. “We may see more sort of asset managers using AI models,” Foo said. He predicted that public companies may increasingly need to structure disclosures and reporting with AI interpretation in mind. “Public companies in particular are going to be forced to put out disclosure materials and regulatory reporting materials in a way that games the AI,” Foo said.
Ford, professional-in-residence at the University of Florida, reminded participants that despite the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities, experience and human judgment remain irreplaceable. Reflecting on his own career in crisis and reputation management, Ford said, “What I did most of the time was corporate reputation and crisis and issues, and that’s what I teach now.”
As the conversation evolved, participants repeatedly returned to the question of whether AI could ever truly replace the human trusted advisor. For many in the room, the answer was clearly no.
Merry, senior vice president at Fahlgren Mortine, said that in high-stakes situations involving crisis and judgment, “I think that’s still a human.”Donnelly, EVP, issues and crisis at M Booth, warned against overestimating AI’s ability to deliver distinctive and winning strategic counsel, describing it as “essentially a cover band.”
Kotlowski, senior vice president at M Booth, summarized what became one of the recurring themes of the session when she said “the trusted advisor is the experienced communicator who knows how to use AI correctly.”
The discussion also explored growing concerns surrounding misinformation, disinformation and content authenticity. Locke, CEO of Tauth Labs, argued that organizations need stronger systems for verification and response as AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated. “There’s really three things you can do. You can protect, you can detect and you can correct,” Locke said. Locke added that “the communications team is going to have to become deeply involved in helping organizations determine authenticity.”
Cohen, CEO of Co-Communications, emphasized the growing importance of active monitoring as AI systems increasingly shape public perception. “Monitoring becomes even more important than it’s ever been before. Brands can no longer think of monitoring as simply tracking media mentions or social chatter.” Cohen said.
By the end of the session, the mood was both urgent and optimistic. AI is clearly transforming how organizations are discovered, evaluated and recommended. But rather than reducing the importance of communications professionals, many participants argued the opposite may be happening. As AI systems increasingly shape reputation at scale, the communicators who can blend strategic judgment, storytelling, business fluency and AI literacy may become more important than ever.
