AI Search Is Changing Brand Discovery As Chatbots Reshape How Consumers Find Products

Candice Burgess-Look. (Image supplied)

AI is changing how brands are discovered

A South African consumer opens ChatGPT and asks it a simple question: which electric SUV should I buy?

The response reads like a curated briefing from the country’s top motoring journalists. It references expert reviews, independent road tests and third-party comparisons. The brand’s own website barely features; their sponsored posts are nowhere to be seen, and their social media is almost invisible.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is already happening today, and research from Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, confirms it.

According to Gartner’s latest predictions for chief communications officers, the communications function is entering a period of significant transformation as Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity become more mainstream.

By 2027, organisations are expected to dramatically increase investment in PR and earned media, while AI-driven chatbots dominate internal communications. Narrative intelligence tools will become essential for reputation management, with communications teams relying more heavily on analytics to guide strategy.

Why earned media is becoming essential in AI search

“This is a structural shift, not a trend, and brands today need to understand that artificial intelligence doesn’t care how much you spent on your campaign,”

“We’re watching the biggest redistribution of visibility in decades. If your brand story isn’t validated by independent media, and if you're not intentionally shaping your press content for how AI sources and cites information, you are quite literally engineering your own invisibility.”

And the data backs this up. Recent research from the University of Toronto analysed more than a thousand consumer prompts across AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and Google. Every cited source was classified as brand (owned), earned (journalistic/editorial), or social.

In consumer electronics, earned media accounted for 92% of citations, while brand content appeared in single digits and social media was virtually non-existent. In the automotive sector, earned media dominated at 82%, again with social barely registering.

In other words, LLMs overwhelmingly favour independent journalism.

Five easy ways to optimise press content for AI

According to Burgess-Look, if visibility now depends on credibility, brands need to rethink how they craft and distribute content. Her steps include:

1. Leading with authority

Place data, expert insights and verifiable facts up front in your press release.

2. Answer real questions

Structure content around the types of prompts consumers are likely to ask for AI tools.

3. Secure independent validation

Third-party commentary and reputable media placements increase AI trust signals.

4. Prioritise clarity over hype

LLMs reward clear, structured, factual information. Avoid technical jargon and waffle.

5. Invest in journalist relationships

The stronger your earned media footprint, the stronger your AI footprint.

PR’s role in the age of LLMs

Unlike traditional search engines that rank pages, LLMs synthesise answers from sources they deem authoritative and reliable, and they are engineered to prioritise third-party validation.

That long-standing PR argument about credibility is no longer a persuasion point for clients. It’s an algorithmic reality.

This shift isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating, with communications becoming both more technical and more trust-driven, and the brands that understand this early will lead.

“PR professionals have been talking about credibility for years, but now there’s no dancing around it. The old playbook of pumping out owned content and boosting it with paid media is being structurally devalued.

AI systems are rewriting the rules of discoverability, with LLMs ranking earned media above paid media because, in truth, they trust journalists and expert commentators far more than a brand's own website or social media channels. That changes everything. It's a PR renaissance,” adds Burgess-Look.

Meanwhile, AI summaries in search engines are already reducing click-through rates, meaning users are increasingly satisfied with AI-generated answers without visiting brand-owned sites, while traditional SEO tactics built around keyword optimisation, sponsored content and social amplification are delivering diminishing returns.

Earned media, however, is being algorithmically elevated.

“PR leads the way in the age of LLMs,” Burgess-Look adds.

“As someone who lives and breathes PR, I am excited, as this is finally our moment, but it does require discipline and a smarter way of storytelling. It also requires brands to stop treating PR as a support function and start treating it as infrastructure," concludes Burgess-Look.

The bottom line is simple: in the age of LLMs, visibility is no longer bought. It’s earned, and PR experts are here for it.