Media Monitoring

AI visibility for public affairs comms teams

Why are public sector comms teams not tracking their AI visibility?

August 19, 2026/0 Comments/in PR, Communications, Media, Public Affairs Media Monitoring, Lumina, AI View Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

In May 2026, AI assistant GOV.UK Chat launched inside the GOV.UK app. Built on more than 80,000 pages of official guidance, it was designed to answer citizens’ questions on tax, driving, childcare, apprenticeships, and benefits. The soft launch saw great take-up, signalling to government departments, regulators, NHS trusts, and local authorities that a majority of the general public are now ‘AIing it’ versus ‘Googling it’.

But not every member of the UK public will be asking GOV.UK Chat for answers, instead going to ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude, which weren’t built on official government guidance. Answers from these LLMs will serve up whatever the web has indexed, regardless of whether that material is accurate, balanced, or years out of date.

The stakes are high for comms teams reckoning with this new AI-mediated information ecosystem, but even higher for public sector organisations with responsibilities to people across the country who depend on them.

When the ‘official’ answer is not fully reliable

Research from the Open Data Institute tested over 22,000 citizen-related queries against leading models including ChatGPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude, and the results found that multiple models were giving incorrect guidance on regulations including Guardian’s Allowance and Sure Start Maternity Grant eligibility. As Professor Elena Simperl of the ODI warned: ‘If language models are to be used safely in citizen-facing services, we need to understand where the technology can be trusted and where it cannot’.

What can Government agencies do to keep AI answers correct if the AI systems that supply them are drawing on sources of such diverse nature and reliability as local press, forums, campaign group websites, and out-of-date PDFs that happen to rank well?

Strategy for AI visibility needs to be different for public sector comms teams

For a consumer brand, AI visibility is primarily a matter of reputation and sales, but for public sector bodies, the stakes are whether people can access a service, meet a deadline, or continue to trust an institution.

Different types of public sector organisation carry different exposure:

Service-delivery bodies (DWP, HMRC, local councils running bins, council tax and planning, NHS trusts) depend on AI-generated answers being current. Eligibility criteria, rates and deadlines change; a chatbot repeating last year’s rules goes past inconvenience to real potential costs to a resident who acts on it.
Regulators (Ofgem, Ofcom, the FCA, the CQC, the ICO) need to be treated by AI systems as the primary, authoritative source on their own remit. If a chatbot leans more heavily on a consumer campaign site or a trade publication’s interpretation than on the regulator itself, this needs to be identified and mitigated.
Policy departments and ministries (DWP, DfE, Defra, the Cabinet Office) need policy explained with the caveats intact. Technical accuracy is not the same as genuine clarity, and AI systems can smooth away all-important nuance.
Councils, combined authorities, and devolved administrations need visibility into how residents are informed about local decisions, especially contentious ones like council tax rises or planning applications. Here, local papers, residents’ Facebook groups, and campaign pages often shape the AI-generated answer more than the council’s own statements.

Five questions for UK public sector comms teams to ask now

1) If a resident is not visiting the organisation’s website, where are they getting their answer instead, and is it correct?

2) How is the organisation’s most recent decision, incident, or policy change actually being described when someone asks an AI about it?

3) When new information is published, does it appear in AI-generated answers reasonably quickly, or is a chatbot still confidently repeating last year’s position?

4) Where is the gap between what has been published and what people are actually being told by these tools?

5) How much of the narrative is being shaped by campaign groups, opposition voices or local press, rather than by the organisation’s own primary sources?

Most comms teams currently have no reliable way of answering these questions. Traditional media can be monitored and social sentiment tracked, but few organisations have visibility into what ChatGPT or Gemini is telling people about them at any given moment, or which sources those answers are drawn from.

How Lumina’s AI View provides that visibility

This is the gap that AI View, part of Vuelio’s Lumina suite, has been developed to address. It tracks what large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are citing when they answer questions about an organisation — not only what they say, but which sources those answers are drawn from. For a public sector communications team, this means the ability to see, in one place:

Source footprint — whether AI answers are drawing on an organisation’s own official guidance, national press, trade and specialist titles, campaign sites, or forums, and how that mix shifts over time.
Competitive and peer benchmarking — how an organisation’s visibility compares with a neighbouring authority, special interest groups, a comparable regulator, or another department handling a similar issue.
Alerts when citation patterns shift suddenly — valuable when a policy announcement, an incident or a contentious local decision begins to change how AI systems discuss an organisation, allowing a comms team to respond before the narrative sets.

Consider a county council approaching budget-setting season. AI View could reveal whether questions about a proposed council tax rise are being answered using the council’s own published rationale, or drawing almost entirely on an eighteen-month-old local newspaper article and a residents’ social media discussion. This is precisely the kind of gap an organisation would want to identify while there is still time to address it, rather than after a scrutiny committee meeting has already raised it.

The GCS’s own Assist tool demonstrates that government communications teams are already comfortable deploying AI internally, for drafting plans and reviewing content. AI View addresses the other half of that picture: understanding how AI represents an organisation externally, to the people it serves.

The public are going to LLMs for answers, but do organisations know what they are being told in response, and whether they are the ones providing that answer?

Find out more about Vuelio’s AI View to see what it can reveal about an organisation’s AI visibility.

Why Communications Must Lead on AI Reputation: Inside Vuelio’s Charity Roundtable

August 4, 2026/0 Comments/in Charity, Communications, Media Lumina, Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers, Public Sector Blog Posts /by Katherine Amenumey

Vuelio recently hosted a roundtable with a group of our charity clients, bringing together senior communications and media professionals for an open, peer-led discussion on a rapidly growing challenge: managing organisational reputation within Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs).

The roundtable brought together experts from leading charities, including the British Heart Foundation, Age UK, and the Stroke Association. The discussion explored how charities are navigating the emerging risks and opportunities associated with AI-driven search, reputation management, and organisational visibility in an increasingly AI-mediated information landscape.

Following a quick AI jargon-buster with Vuelio COO Kyle Lindsay, the conversation quickly moved to a broader strategic question:

As AI increasingly becomes another way people discover and understand organisations, what role should communications play in stewarding organisational reputation and public understanding?

For the senior communications and media leaders around the table, one thing was clear: AI is increasingly influencing how audiences discover, understand, and form opinions about organisations.

Rather than focusing solely on how organisations can optimise for AI, the discussion explored what this shift means for communications. AI hasn’t created an entirely new discipline for communicators, but has introduced another audience – one that interprets, combines, and redistributes information about organisations, often before someone has visited a website, read a news article, or spoken to an expert.

Drawing on the experiences, concerns, and practical approaches shared during the roundtable, here are key insights to help communications teams better understand what this shift means for organisational reputation, measurement, and future communications strategy.

1. AI is changing how reputation is formed

For decades, the path a supporter or journalist took to find your charity was predictable: Question → Google → Click → Read. Today, that journey is changing. Millions of active users are bypassing traditional search engines entirely, going straight to platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Instead of receiving a list of links, users get a synthesised answer.

‘People are reading the synthesised answer, not the article. Reputation often now forms inside the AI response.’ – Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

If a major donor or a journalist queries an LLM about your cause tomorrow morning, they will likely absorb that generated snapshot before ever reaching your website or reading the original source material. Increasingly, the first impression of your organisation is being formed within an AI-generated answer rather than through a direct interaction with your own channels.

That doesn’t replace traditional media relations or stakeholder engagement. It does, however, introduce another place where organisational reputation is formed – one that Communications teams increasingly need to understand and measure.

2. Who owns AI reputation?

‘If ChatGPT gave a highly inaccurate answer about your organisation tomorrow, who owns fixing it?’- Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

Is it IT? Digital? SEO? Marketing?

The consensus around the table was clear: while AI itself spans multiple business units, reputational challenges firmly sit within Communications and PR.

If your website had a typo, communications might not patch the code. But if that typo damaged your public standing or made its way into a journalist’s brief, comms would lead the response.

That perspective closely reflects Gartner’s recent view that communications is evolving beyond distributing messages towards stewarding public understanding across media, search and AI.

Rather than introducing an entirely new responsibility, AI reinforces many of the responsibilities communications teams already have: building trust, earning third-party credibility, shaping organisational narratives, and ensuring they are accurately understood.

Because LLMs synthesise information from multiple trusted sources rather than relying on a single source of truth, their understanding of an organisation is only as strong as the wider evidence ecosystem surrounding it. That makes consistency, credibility, and corroboration increasingly important – not just for the audiences communications teams have always engaged with, but for AI as well.

The role of communications isn’t to control every AI response. It’s to understand, influence, and measure the information ecosystem shaping those responses.

3. Understanding AI’s Information Ecosystem

Different AI models can return different answers, and different questions about the same organisation can surface different sources. Even the same prompt may produce differing responses over time as the information landscape evolves.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t patterns. While each platform has its own approach to retrieving and synthesising information, there are often consistent themes in the types of sources, organisations, and evidence that influence AI-generated answers. Rather than trying to optimise for one individual response, the discussion focused on understanding those broader patterns and the information ecosystem shaping them.

That ecosystem can include:
– Owned content
– Earned media
– Government and regulatory information
– Academic and research institutions
– Reference sites
– Industry bodies
– Partner organisations

The balance between these sources isn’t fixed. It changes depending on the organisation, the sector, the country and, perhaps most importantly, the question being asked.

‘Our own analysis demonstrates this. While individual responses vary, the broader evidence ecosystem influencing an organisation often shows clear and measurable patterns.’

This was one of the reasons the group discussed treating AI as another audience rather than another search engine. Just as different stakeholder groups consume information differently, AI-generated answers are shaped by different combinations of trusted evidence depending on the context.

Understanding those patterns is becoming increasingly important. It provides a blueprint for ‘winning’ AI, but also helps communications teams understand how their organisation is being interpreted, identify which evidence is shaping those answers, and measure how that evolves over time.

4. Trust is built through corroboration

There is a common misconception that Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or ‘AI SEO’ is a game of technical tricks. The roundtable data debunked this. LLMs do not simply parrot your press releases, but look for corroboration.

When synthesising a profile, an LLM compares your owned website claims against trusted third parties: journalists, government databases, academic institutions, and industry bodies. High-quality earned media footprint can heavily influence how these systems talk about you.

‘Earned media hasn’t become less important in the AI era. It’s arguably become more important because it increasingly influences the systems people are using to access information.’ – Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy, Vuelio

This led to one of the most interesting debates around the table – what actually makes earned media influential in AI-generated responses. Is it simply coverage in the biggest, most recognised publications, or does the prominence and substance of an individual article matter more?

We took that question to Vuelio’s Executive Director of AI Strategy, Ngaire Crawford. Her view was that the answer is both:

‘The quality of the coverage will really inform whether the model uses it as a source. It needs to help answer the question with clear facts and validated endorsement, so quality absolutely comes into it. Sometimes smaller sources are surfaced because there simply isn’t that quality in more reputable publications.’

For communications teams, that’s an important distinction. The objective is to go beyond securing coverage in the largest publications to build a strong, consistent evidence ecosystem around your organisation and your cause.

It’s another reminder that there is no definitive blueprint for ‘winning’ in LLMs yet. The models continue to evolve, and their weighting of different signals isn’t transparent. What remains consistent is the importance of producing accurate, trusted and well-corroborated information across the wider information landscape. And those are principles communications teams have always understood.

Practical Tips for Comms Teams:

The discussion concluded by moving away from theory and towards practical application. If AI is becoming another audience, what does that mean for day-to-day communications planning?

The consensus wasn’t that communications teams should completely rethink their strategies. Instead, it was about building on the principles they already know work.

Build a consistent evidence ecosystem

AI-generated answers are shaped by information from multiple trusted sources. Consistency across owned content, earned media, thought leadership, research and partner organisations helps reduce conflicting narratives and gives AI a stronger evidence base from which to build an understanding of your organisation.

Understand which sources shape AI’s understanding

Rather than focusing solely on traditional media lists, consider which publications, organisations, and evidence sources are consistently influencing AI-generated answers about your organisation and your sector. Those may include national media, but they could also include trade publications, academic research, government sources or trusted industry bodies.

Think beyond coverage

Communications teams have traditionally measured success through metrics such as coverage, reach, and engagement. Increasingly, there’s also value in understanding how that coverage contributes to the wider evidence ecosystem influencing AI-generated answers.

Keep humans in the loop

While AI can support research, planning, and content creation, the discussion reinforced that authenticity, judgement, and critical thinking remain essential. AI can accelerate communications, but it shouldn’t replace the expertise required to build trust and protect reputation.

Final Thoughts: Measure, Don’t Speculate

The session concluded with a shift toward measurement. Because AI systems are probabilistic and non-deterministic (meaning the same prompt can yield a different answer on a different day), tracking reputation requires a systematic framework over time, which is what Vuelio’s “AI View Score” is designed to do. Bringing several visibility signals together into one easy-to-track metric which can be shared internally to inform not only the Communications team but the wider stakeholders.

Throughout the roundtable, one theme consistently emerged: AI doesn’t replace the fundamentals of good communications, but expands them.

Just as communications teams have spent years measuring media reputation, stakeholder influence, and campaign effectiveness, AI introduces another audience whose understanding can also be monitored, measured and learned from.

Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy at Vuelio, said:

‘The goal isn’t to optimise for individual AI responses but to understand how your organisation is being interpreted over time, in the same way we’ve measured media reputation for years. AI simply introduces another audience whose understanding we now have the opportunity to measure and impact.’

Rather than asking whether an organisation can ‘win’ individual prompts, the discussion focused on understanding broader patterns: which evidence is shaping AI-generated answers, how that changes over time, and where communications teams have opportunities to strengthen organisational reputation.

Because AI systems continue to evolve, there will never be a single definitive answer to what AI says about an organisation. That’s why measurement matters. Looking beyond individual responses to understand the wider information ecosystem gives Communications teams a more meaningful way to track reputation, identify emerging trends and make informed strategic decisions.

This is the thinking behind Vuelio’s AI View. Rather than focusing on isolated prompts, AI View helps organisations understand the wider evidence ecosystem influencing AI-generated answers, bringing together visibility, authority, freshness, sentiment and dominance into a measurable framework that can be tracked over time.

Ultimately, communications has always been responsible for helping organisations earn trust, build credibility, and shape public understanding.

Get in touch with the Vuelio team if you’d like to see how AI View can help you understand your organisation’s visibility in AI-powered search. If you’re also interested in attending future roundtable events, just let us know – we’d love you to join us.

The reality of building an AI comms strategy for regulated industries

August 3, 2026/0 Comments/in Politics, PR, Communications, Media Press and Bloggers, Lumina, Media Monitoring, PR /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Artificial intelligence is now a core operational reality for PR and communications, but for those working in highly regulated environments, or those with clients that do, the challenge of using these tools effectively comes with an extra layer of complexity.

To unpack what that means in practice, we were joined by three comms leaders from some of the UK’s critical infrastructure sectors for our latest webinar, ‘How to build an AI comms strategy: Lessons from regulated industries’.

Watch the full webinar here.

Bringing insight and experience from the space, energy, transport, maritime, and aviation sectors were SSE plc‘s Group Head of External Comms Ross Easton, First Rail London‘s Communications Manager Dana Raer, and Viasat‘s Senior Communications Manager Richard Jones.

Together, the panel explored how comms strategies are shifting under the weight of AI and LLMs; the realities of getting buy-in in regulated sectors; why the human touch still can’t be replicated; and what all of this means for earned media and crisis communications.

‘Google it’ or ‘AI it?’ How the emergence of AI and LLMs has changed comms strategies

For Richard, the first major shift concerns the sheer volume and noise of information, and filtering through the avalanche of content being shared:

‘We’re all having to factor in much more mass-produced AI content that companies are putting out, but also that journalists are receiving – there’s a lot more AI content, and pitches being delivered by automated AI systems’.

Journalists are being inundated with AI-generated contributions via AI-powered outreach, and the digital landscape is saturated. This brings extra challenges for comms professionals tasked with managing and protecting the flow of correct information. Adding to this obstacle is AI’s new role as an informational gatekeeper. Where audiences would ‘Google it’ if they needed information, people are now ‘AI’ing it’ instead.

‘The way that we track and monitor is changing to deal with the inconsistencies or incorrect information that LLMs are sharing with customers, stakeholders, and regulators,’ explained Richard. And the risk of incorrect narratives doesn’t just come from outside of organisations – comms teams themselves must be cautious about what they’re putting out into the world:

‘My sector is not only highly regulated, but very highly technically complex. We have a fleet of satellites around the world and deal with a lot of highly sensitive, secure projects for governments. Absolutely, we want to accelerate our use of AI. But we also have to do it in a careful way – comms itself has much more of a responsibility now.’

Sharing a perspective from the energy sector, Ross framed the shift around changing audience behaviour:

‘A statistic from Bain & Company found that about 80% of consumers now rely on AI written summaries for about 40% of their searches.

‘You’ve got to be optimising your content for those Large Language Models.’

That means paying attention to channels that might previously have been overlooked:

‘You’re paying much more attention to things like Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is a source that AI will go to and find information’.

For Ross, it’s also about legacy content: SSE is rebuilding its website while managing an archive of news. He advises comms teams to think about ‘what is on your web estate, and who is saying what about you’.

Dana mentioned LinkedIn as another useful source for LLMs, and emphasised the importance of an organisation’s own communications and messaging. Even though First Rail London doesn’t rely on its website to drive business (‘we are the operator of the London Overground… people come to us directly’), AI is factoring this website content into its answers:

‘If the public are asking ChatGPT about the London Overground and if the service is good, I have to include LLMs as a way to monitor perception. I’m doing my own audits of Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude.’

Is it a challenge to get buy-in on AI from internal stakeholders in regulated industries?

Dana didn’t hesitate: ‘I don’t think there is a need for buy-in. Everyone’s sold, to be honest. There’s not much need for convincing’.

Her approach, from a comms perspective, has been incremental: ‘speeding up processes, getting them in my workflows, briefing all people or employees on what we can do, what we cannot do. Just this morning, I saw a news story about people sharing Google Docs on Anthropic Claude and them appearing later on in Google searches… it’s such an unregulated sector that you really have to be careful what you put out there’.

Richard agreed on internal stakeholder appetite for AI innovation, in his sector — ‘I don’t really remember a colleague internally saying, “I don’t like to use that AI stuff”‘ — but pointed to a deeper change in the comms function itself:

‘Previously, with any kind of new software, it would be a comms team asking the IT team, can we just roll this out faster? But now, it’s important for us to be the reputational managers and raise these internal questions of how we should be using it. Thinking about potential reputational risks – that’s our job.’

Ross was more cautious on whether or not everyone is sold on AI optimisation in the energy sector: ‘Definitely not’.

SSE has policies restricting external tools and sensitive data, alongside GDPR considerations, and uses a protected internal tool instead. The more significant internal challenge is guidance, not access:

‘I think the bigger challenge internally is showing people how to use AI in the best possible way. AI is there as a guide for us in the same way that a sat nav is to a London cabby. It’s not there to replace our knowledge, or our experience.’

His team utilise internal agents that review tone of voice on press releases before they go out, but Ross stressed: ‘It’s not rewriting it for them, but acting as a coach’.

AI can’t replicate the ‘human touch’ — how vital is authenticity?

For Dana, authenticity is an intrinsic part of communicating for a public service network:

‘Trust, in general, is really hard to win, but it can be lost so easily through one comment to the media.’

She was direct about the limits of AI-generated tone in a crisis:

‘It requires empathy. You need common sense and good judgement, and that comes from years of experience that the AI platforms don’t have. AI is fantastic to draft that first blank page, but it cannot take responsibility for the final one.’

Richard advised not underestimating the public’s capacity to spot AI work: ‘You must act as though your audience is highly intelligent because the likelihood is they are’.

He described the ‘sandwich approach’ to AI taken at Viasat — human direction, AI-driven legwork, human review.

On developing the next generation of PR professionals in an AI-first world, Ross was clear that experience-sharing can’t be automated away:

‘Time investment is so important, particularly for people new into a career. This really needs to be something that we focus on as AI takes over a lot more of workplace life.’

What does this mean for media outreach?

Dana highlighted Google’s continuing influence, despite the wide shift to ‘AIing’ for information:

‘There are about 10 Google searches for one AI query… for now, most people still Google more.’

But she was equally clear that AI and LLMs rely heavily on earned media, also pulling heavily from organic content, websites, and LinkedIn. She raised a note of caution on the latter, however…

‘The language people use on LinkedIn has become very similar and repetitive. Many journalists are steering clear of LinkedIn as a source at the moment’. She added that many journalist contacts are ‘really reluctant to use any form of AI’ themselves, and equally reluctant to work with PR professionals who lean on it too heavily.

On how AI is impacting the media, Ross sees a silver lining for a subsector that has been struggling for over a decade now: local media. A category PR and comms professionals shouldn’t overlook…

‘AI is giving a kind of renewal to those local outlets, because their content is being picked up, and often it’s not behind paywalls’. He anticipates more licensing deals between publishers and AI providers as a business model, concluding: ‘I do think that earned media is still a really important place to invest time and effort, absolutely’.

Richard agreed that trusted, established outlets will also only grow more valuable:

‘Your BBC, your Guardians, your Financial Times – those with really high levels of awareness will become more important and more trusted, because people will have less trust for other news sources.’

He was careful to frame AI visibility as just one KPI among several:

‘The BBC might help me with GEO, but I still want to show up in those publications because that gets to actual humans directly – actual humans still read the BBC.’

How does AI factor into crisis communications?

Dana cited a stark statistic on crisis: a BBC and EBU study found that ‘45% of AI responses to news questions had at least one significant issue’.

Her position on using AI in a crisis was staunch: ‘For crisis communications, I’ll never recommend using AI. You’re speaking to people and people want to hear from people’.

Richard pointed to a coming shift in how crisis statements need to be written, given how audiences now seek information: ‘A lot of your customers will immediately be opening their phones and saying to their favourite AI platform, “What’s going on with the trains? What’s going on with Viasat satellites, what’s going on with SSE?”‘

This has real implications for internal education, particularly with senior leaders and colleagues who may be less familiar with AI platforms and how they’re best used:

‘You don’t want to wait until the issue or the crisis happens to raise that point. Make sure there’s alignment on it and agreement on it, so that everyone’s on the same page of what we’re trying to do.’

Watch the full webinar here, and find out more about media outreach in the age of AI in our Vuelio report ‘The role of AI, LLMs, and earned media in shaping reputation‘.

The role of AI, LLMs, and earned media in shaping reputation

July 28, 2026/in Media Database, Media Monitoring, Political Database, Political Monitoring /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews now sit between you and the stakeholders you want to reach. When someone wants to know whether they can trust a brand or organisation, an AI is often who they ask first.

These tools don’t invent their own opinion of you, but learn from what other sources publish, and repeat whichever version already dominates. For PR and comms professionals, that raises an urgent question: which sources are most likely to influence an LLM’s answer, and how do you make sure it’s the right one?

Using Vuelio Media Monitoring and Lumina AI View, we tracked how UK supermarket brands handled the same crisis, then followed the trail two months later to see exactly what AI tools were citing when describing them, and why.

Inside the report, you’ll discover:

– What really shapes the story when a crisis hits, and why two brands facing identical pressures ended up with starkly different share prices and coverage
– Why earned media, not owned content, is what AI tools trust
– Why AI rewards authority over outrage, and how a strong, ownable narrative outperforms sensationalism in shaping AI sentiment
– How today’s coverage keeps working long after the news cycle moves on, and what that means for the stories you invest in now

Factoring AI, fragmentation, and uncertainty into your comms strategy

July 6, 2026/0 Comments/in PR, Communications, Media Press and Bloggers, Lumina, Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

With AI now integrated into the very fabric of the media and informational landscape, the rules of PR and corporate communications are being rewritten. But are traditional PR skills a thing of the past?

To unpack what is changing in comms and what will endure in this AI-enabled era, Vuelio hosted an expert panel discussion.

‘How to Factor AI, Fragmentation, and Uncertainty Into Your Comms Strategy’, hosted by Vuelio’s Head of Content Marketing Alex Bryson, brought together three industry leaders, each offering a distinct perspective on the evolving requirements of the profession. Pearson‘s Director of Financial Communications Laura Ewart, who brings 20 years of experience in financial, corporate, and executive communications, provided a practitioner’s lens on the pressures of modern, high-stakes environments. Diego Bironzo, a Vice President at Edelman Intelligence, offered deep experience in navigating reputation management and trust in the wake of crises, providing a strategic view on how brands can maintain authority in an AI-mediated world. Representing the measurement and intelligence side, Amy Chappell, Head of Insights Strategy at Vuelio, joined the conversation to share findings from our curated media analysis and observations from her breadth of experience in the PR and media landscape.

Is AI an accelerant, rather than a paradigm shift?

While AI is often discussed as a revolutionary force, the panel noted that its primary immediate impact has been to intensify existing trends.

‘My view is that AI, at least at the moment, is not so much a paradigm change when it comes to comms, but an accelerant,’ said Diego.

‘This technology has accelerated some of the shifts we’ve been seeing for a number of years as digital became more prominent… including speeding up story cycles and fragmenting audiences. As a result, increasingly, we’re also seeing the effects of “context collapse”: the messages that, for my grandparents’ generation, would have been mediated by mass media, now are appearing completely unmediated, distributed across platforms to various audiences, traveling in unexpected ways.’

Amy explored how AI is changing the way people access information and form opinions about organisations. While reputation has always been influenced by a mix of media coverage, expert commentary, and stakeholder discussion, AI platforms are increasingly becoming another route through which people discover and evaluate information.

Amy examined the role of AI and LLMs as a mediator for messaging and the news cycle:

‘Using Vuelio’s AI View tool, it’s possible to look into citations of organisations mentioned across the major LLM platforms. In this example, one thing that stands out is the different sources that are feeding the LLMs – earned media overwhelmingly dominates AI citations.

‘AI and LLM platforms, seemingly, at least in this sector, aren’t just looking for the most recent coverage. In this example, we found that LLMs weren’t looking for the most recent; it was a combination. A crisis that happens one week doesn’t automatically affect how LLMs cite organisations the next.’

Amy found that the sources feeding into the supermarket citations were mainly trade titles – The Grocer, the Grocery Gazette, for example. For each new story, or campaign, traditional ‘Tier 1’ titles aren’t automatically going to be the first port of call for LLMs.

‘Clear messaging and spokespeople are still so important to have. So, if Tesco or Sainsbury’s continue to target those types of publications that are feeding the LLMs at the moment, that may have a positive impact on their reputation in the future.’

The emergence of AI as a stakeholder

One of the most significant shifts identified by a growing number of PR practitioners is AI’s active participation in the information ecosystem as a stakeholder.

‘Increasingly, what we’re seeing is AI ultimately being another audience,’ said Amy. ‘In terms of what LLMs are serving about organisations, it’s almost another consumer base.’

Diego expanded on the implications for brand management: ‘I like the idea of treating AI as an additional audience, a stakeholder, because LLMs play a role in mediating your message, adding a layer of interpretation before your content is served up to audiences. As a consequence, perceptions can be shaped from a number of different signals, and these are increasingly harder to keep control of.’

But this doesn’t just have an impact on brand reputation – Laura emphasised the financial implications:

‘AI is an audience as well as a tool, especially in financial comms, where investors are using AI to synthesise lots of data. You’ve also got AI bots, which are automatically trading without humans in the loop – so you need to think of it as an audience when you’re putting your press releases and your content together.’

The strategic necessity of human authenticity

As AI platforms become central to how information is served, the demand for high-quality, authentic human content has increased. When audiences and algorithms alike are flooded with synthetic noise, trust becomes a primary differentiator.

‘Over the past year, there has been a growing expectation upon PRs to use AI in their everyday comms, but it’s not just about knowing how to prompt an AI, it’s also about how to use your critical thinking and judgment to know how and why you’re going to be using AI,’ Laura said.

Where critical thinking is needed, and PRs luckily have this in their wheelhouse already, is in channel selection.

‘For actually getting cut through, we’re finding the best things to do are op-eds, comment pieces, and podcasts. People are looking for voices they can trust and which they feel are authentic, and I think that’s why we’ve seen the rise of the podcast.’

Diego echoed this focus on the human element, noting that earned media has become ‘more relevant than ever’ because of the way it feeds into AI search and interpretation:

‘Increasingly, an authentic and culturally relevant message is becoming more and more important, and that’s the kind of content that people are going to want to see. It needs to be both informed by data and insights as well as have that “human in the loop” touch for authenticity and empathy.’

Practical Integration

As organisations look to position themselves within this new infrastructure, the panel stressed the importance of factoring Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) into strategies.

Regarding how to appear in AI search results, Laura advised a long-term approach:

‘Think about how you can tailor your content to adjust for AI search – there’s lots of different tips and tricks that we’re learning as we go along. For example, LLMs draw from FAQs a lot, so that’s something to think about for website content.’

Diego added that this requires consistent monitoring:

‘People are at the stage of establishing a baseline of where they appear in searches on GEO, being mindful of the fact that answer engines are highly dynamic and constantly changing. It’s important to start understanding what is the baseline, what behaviors and sources shape answers, and think about how it impacts strategy, how we can start to feed the right type of content to LLMs.’

The Future of the Profession

Ultimately, the consensus among the panelists was that AI will not replace the PR professional, but rather demand a more sophisticated, intelligence-led approach to strategy.

Amy summarised the outlook:

‘I’m a big advocate in thinking that AI has actually increased and enhanced the role of the PR. Human skills are going to be increasingly important. It’s still about trust, so getting out there, meeting with journalists, and building relationships with them will continue to be really key.’

As the industry moves through these stages of maturity, from narrative stewardship to influence intelligence, successful comms teams will be those that treat AI as a central stakeholder, prioritise evidence-led communication, and double down on the human connection that algorithms cannot replicate (for now…).

Find out how LLMs are representing your brand and clients in their answers with Vuelio’s AI View.

For more on how AI is changing the way we communicate, check out key insights from our previous Vuelio panel event with Purposeful Relations’ Stuart Bruce, the British Heart Foundation’s Nicole Yost, and JournalismAI’s Tshepo Tshabalala.

Counter Terrorism Policing

May 21, 2026/in News Distribution, Canvas, Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis /by Yi Chen Lin

ITN

May 20, 2026/in Media Analysis, News Distribution, Canvas, Media Database, Media Monitoring /by Yi Chen Lin

Is earned media the solution for comms in the age of AI Answers?

May 18, 2026/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, Media PR, Press and Bloggers, Lumina, Media Database, Media Monitoring Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Artificial intelligence has evolved from an experimental tech-stack tool to become a vital part of the fabric of daily reality for public relations. Alongside pitching stories for human-made editorial calendars, comms practitioners are navigating a deeply fragmented media ecosystem where generative engines like Large Language Models (LLMs) fundamentally alter how information is created, distributed, and consumed.

For years, the PR industry measured success by the strength of a clipping or the positioning of a link on a Google Search results page. Today, the interface between brands and audiences has changed. The fast rise of agentic browsers and AI companions that summarise the web has boosted media intelligence from a supporting function to a mission-critical part of the comms infrastructure.

To survive in this new reality, communication teams must understand the new role of earned media; the primary fuel powering the AI answer engines that shape brand reputation.

How generative engines are rewriting the search playbook

The traditional digital marketing funnel is facing an existential crunch. According to Nic Newman’s ‘Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026‘ report for the Reuters Institute, publishers expect traffic from search engines to decline by 43% over the next three years. This sharp downturn follows recent dramatic declines in referrals from social media platforms. The culprit at the centre of this disruption? Google’s AI Overviews.

Now appearing at the top of roughly 10% of search results in the United States and rolling out globally, these AI summaries have driven a massive surge in zero-click searches — scenarios where users get their answers directly on the search page without ever clicking through to a corporate website or news source.

This shift is heavily driven by changing consumer behaviours. Data from a January 2026 study ‘Navigating the Shift: A Comparative Analysis of Web Search and Generative AI Response Generation‘ highlights that Google’s AI Overviews now reach 2 billion monthly users across 200 countries, with referral traffic from AI platforms growing by 357% year-over-year. Crucially, the way people search has evolved: 57.9% of searches triggering AI Overviews are now phrased as full questions, and queries of eight words or longer have a 57% probability of generating an AI-synthesised response rather than a traditional list of blue links.

These platforms do not return ranked document lists but synthesise answers, reason over retrieved evidence, and selectively cite sources they judge to be authoritative. And what these engines consider authoritative is, increasingly, earned media.

A 2025 Semrush AI Overviews Study revealed that while Google attempts a balanced sourcing approach (41% earned, 34% social, and 26% brand content), standalone AI engines lean overwhelmingly on earned content. Anthropic’s Claude concentrates most heavily on earned media at 65% (and a mere 1% on social), followed by OpenAI’s GPT-4o at 57% earned media.

To highlight this trend further, Gartner’s ‘Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies‘ and Purposeful Relations’ ‘The Impact of Generative Relations and Communications‘ reports both validate that AI search engines heavily favour citing earned, shared, and organic owned content over paid channels. More than 95% of links cited within these platforms are non-paid mentions, with earned media accounting for 89% of those citations. Journalistic content alone accounts for 27% of citations, skyrocketing to 49% for queries requiring real-time, recent information.

Ultimately, LLMs rely on the credibility that traditional PR has spent decades cultivating. However, simply securing a mention is no longer enough. As Nicole Yost, Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) pointed out during Vuelio’s recent in-person event ‘How AI is changing the way we communicate‘, the challenge has evolved. Managing communications for a major healthcare charity means navigating an environment where AI is used not just to draft messaging, but to predict trends and actively counter misinformation. Nicole observes:

‘Various studies have shown that AI is using earned media for its content. But how do you differentiate and cut through the noise, is the question. Earned media is having a moment. I was talking to some colleagues earlier, and they’re saying it’s everywhere, all over LinkedIn, it’s “PRs’ time” and all that. But, only if you can cut through the noise, be really trusted and credible, are you going to have an impact on your brand.’

Making your earned media count for LLMs

While the data paints a glowing picture for the resurgence of PR, communications teams must avoid treating these statistics as a one-size-fits-all victory. Context, nuance, and strategy matter more than raw volume.

Stuart Bruce, PR Futurist and Co-founder of Purposeful Relations — a management consultancy specialising in advising in-house comms teams, international bodies like the OECD, and charities on AI adoption — urges a grounded perspective.

Reflecting on the sudden flood of vendor reports, Stuart notes:

‘All these reports that have been coming out say that LLMs favour earned media in terms of where they get information from, and where they put their citations. That’s partially true.

‘Our white paper analysed the multitude of reports that have been published throughout the year (anybody that’s selling an LLM tool published a report to justify them to marketing). One said that 95% of LLM citations are from earned media. Another one said 43%. And yes, the importance of earned media is absolutely on the rise, but it’s really important to realise it’s not the only one, and it is very different between different sectors.’

To make earned media truly count within AI summaries, communications strategies must move past old-school broad message distribution. The focus must pivot toward building earned proof, shaping the credible, factual raw material that both human audiences and intelligent machine agents use to determine who is genuinely trustworthy.

A strategic roadmap for modern PR: Treating AI as a stakeholder

If LLMs are actively mediating how the public understands your organisation or your clients, you can no longer treat them as neutral tech tools; they are actually a brand-new audience. Stuart suggests a distinct shift in how teams approach Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), breaking it down into three flexible, strategic pillars tailored to organisational needs:

1. Build an AI Stakeholder Map

‘The first thing you need to do is to actually understand the space,’ Stuart advises. ‘We describe AI as a stakeholder, because we wouldn’t start trying to influence stakeholders until we fully understand them.

‘Do you have your stakeholder map? Trying to create that is actually really difficult when it comes to LLMs, because there are several of them, and then they’re all going to be saying different things.’

Comms teams must map which models their audiences use and audit how their brand currently surfaces across different engines.

2. Constant recency and the power of niche media

LLMs possess vast amounts of historical data within their static models, but when a user asks a time-sensitive question, the engine must look outward for real-time information. ‘So, if you want to influence what’s not in the model, they’re going to be looking for really up-to-date, recent information — you’re constantly feeding the beast and making sure that your information out there is recent,’ says Stuart.

This will markedly change media targeting strategy:

‘The second thing to consider is, what does that mean? Does that include your website? That might mean just refreshing a page, updating a page, but also things like labelling if a page has out-of-date information. AI needs to be taught that. It needs to understand relevance, and that’s basically where earned media comes in. It’s not necessarily going to be your tier-one titles. It could actually be small, niche titles. It could be trade press. It could be expert blogs. And that’s because LLMs know that’s a specialist source, this is going to be where to find reliable information.’

3. Establish multiple touchpoints for reputation

An isolated piece of coverage will no longer be effective on its own. AI models look for cross-referenced consistency across the web to validate a claim. Stuart provides a practical example:

‘You might have a spokesperson featured in the Daily Mail, but if that’s the only reference to them, AI is not necessarily going to consider them a credible spokesperson. If they were available on your website, if their LinkedIn profile constantly talks about the same thing, if they’ve spoken at conferences, if they’re in earned media, they instantly become a credible source. You’ve got to have those multiple touchpoints.’

Shifting trust: When audiences believe AI over brands

The urgency of this strategic pivot becomes clearer when considering how rapidly public trust is transitioning. During a recent Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR & comms stakeholder‘, Dr Anne Gregory — Professor Emeritus of Corporate Communication at the University of Huddersfield and a leading international researcher who has directed the Global Capability Framework — highlighted how deeply this machine mediation influences public perception:

‘AI is much more than just an assistant; it is a powerful actor in the information ecosystem.

‘It mediates our engagement with organisations and individuals, and evidence is emerging that AI is often believed more than other traditional sources.’

This observation is backed by hard data. Purposeful Relations’ report, in partnership with 72Point, surveyed 5,000 UK adults to uncover modern attitudes toward media, news, and generative tech. The findings regarding trust were eye-opening: While scientists and technical experts predictably ranked highest at 80%, AI answers achieved a 44% trust rating.

‘So 44% of people trust that LLM answer: they’re not necessarily going to go to your website,’ Stuart noted.

This creates a reputational hazard if your infrastructure is lagging. Dr Anne issued a stark warning for teams slow to adapt to this shift:

‘Even though we know these summaries are often incomplete and biased, we tend to believe them. If we don’t regard AI as an influential stakeholder, we could be putting ourselves in jeopardy.’

The new toolkit for AI visibility

To transition from traditional communicators into central corporate strategists who manage reputation in this new climate, PR professionals need tools built specifically for their workflows. They cannot rely on legacy search engine tools designed purely for digital marketing or paid media.

‘Vuelio is launching something soon, which will be another tool that will help you to understand that,’ revealed Stuart during our latest event.

‘The tools that are coming from the PR space are a lot more useful to PR people than some of the ones that are coming from the digital marketing and the search space. They understand the pressures, the trends, the type of information that we need to know.’

This targeted innovation underpins Vuelio, providing an AI Visibility solution that’s specifically geared towards PR & Comms.

Lumina AI View helps you understand what AI knows about you, and where it learned it from. By tracking the sources that models such as Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude cite when representing you, it reveals where you stand — and how to impact this.

The battleground for brand relevance has officially shifted. By ensuring your earned media strategy is continuous, highly credible, and verified across multiple digital touchpoints, you can ensure your organisation, and the clients you work with, are not just indexed by the algorithms, but trusted by them.

Find out more about Vuelio’s Lumina solutions here.

Kaizen Search

May 16, 2026/in Media Monitoring, PR /by Vuelio UK

British Medical Association

May 10, 2026/in Media Monitoring, PR /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Rail Safety & Standards Board

May 8, 2026/in Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, News Distribution, Stakeholder Engagement, Canvas /by Vuelio UK

The UK Housing Crisis: From A Supply Problem To A Political Emergency?

May 6, 2026/0 Comments/in PR, Communications, Media Media Analysis, PR, Press and Bloggers, Lumina, Media Monitoring Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

The UK housing debate has become heated as arguments over who we are building for and whether the current political leadership is capable of delivering on its promises abound.

Over the last month, the conversation has moved away from construction targets and toward a much messier reality involving planning gridlock, industrial supply chain failures, and a burgeoning leadership crisis in Westminster.

To understand how these narratives are moving, we analysed media data using Vuelio’s Lumina. This AI-powered tool surfaces the stories that matter, the different viewpoints within them, and the specific people and organisations driving the news. Between 5 April and 30 April 2026, we examined 17 distinct stories with competing perspectives to cut through thousands of media items and offer a definite look at where the narratives sit right now.

The results show a sector under immense pressure. From the grey belt of Kent to the rural Highlands, the debate is fragmenting. For those in public affairs and communications, staying on top of these shifts is the difference between leading the conversation and being buried by it.

Here is what the data tells us about the current state of the UK housing market…

A Perfect Storm Brings Housebuilding To A Decade Low

The most dominant story right now reflects a growing concern that the national housebuilding machine has ground to a halt. While the Labour government remains committed to its target of 1.5 million homes, the industry is describing a perfect storm that makes those numbers look more like a dream than a delivery plan.

The Home Builders Federation and major players like the Berkeley Group are leading this narrative, arguing that the entire financial model of building in the UK is becoming unviable. They point to a mix of high interest rates, rising material costs, and what they call bureaucratic ‘sludge’ in the planning system. This has led to a situation where major developers are cutting back on land purchases, with no clear path to profit.

Due to the data, this viewpoint carries a lot of weight. Construction starts in London have plummeted to levels not seen in years, and national figures for brick and block deliveries are falling. As reported by Guardian Online, these systemic delays are now being described as a ‘housing recession’, putting the Government in a difficult spot. While ministers insist their planning reforms will eventually work, the industry loudly disagrees.

The key drivers here are the industry bodies who have shifted from quiet lobbying to very public warnings. Neil Jefferson of the Home Builders Federation is a central figure, framing the crisis as a failure of policy to meet economic reality. When these organisations speak, they go beyond representing individual companies, to an entire supply chain that feels abandoned by the current fiscal environment.

The Battle Over ‘Beauty’ And Family Space In London

While the national story is about volume, the London narrative is about quality and suitability. A major divide has opened up between City Hall and its critics over what kind of homes the capital actually needs. The Deputy Mayor for Housing Tom Copley has been vocal in defending the current strategy, predicting that 2026 will be a turnaround year.

However, a growing chorus of experts and politicians disagree. The Housing Forum and the G15 group of housing associations are pushing a perspective that London is centering units over people. They argue that building thousands of small one-bedroom flats does nothing for the 75,000 households stuck in temporary accommodation, or families living in overcrowded conditions. They instead want a shift toward counting the number of people housed, rather than just the number of front doors created.

This debate has become aesthetically-focused, as well. Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly has entered the fray, attacking what he calls ‘soulless tower blocks’. He advocates for ‘mansion blocks’ and ‘intelligent density’, in some clever political positioning. With the focus on ‘beauty’ and ‘gentle density’, the Conservatives seek to win over local residents with a tendency to block new developments. Their bet: people are less likely to say no plans that are an aesthetic improvement.

According to MyLondon, this debate is a fundamental challenge to the Mayor’s strategy. If the public starts to believe that the new homes being built are the wrong homes, political support for massive development could vanish. The key drivers in this section, including Anna Clarke of The Housing Forum, are successfully reframing the crisis as one of distribution and suitability, not just supply.

Political Instability Casting A Shadow Over Policy

Perhaps a concerning trend for those in the housing sector is how much the Mandelson controversy and questions regarding Keir Starmer’s leadership are starting to take hold of the policy agenda – the work of fixing the planning system curtailed by a focus on internal dissent and scandals.

Commentators like Alex Brummer for This Is Money and reporters for the Financial Times are painting a picture of a ‘rudderless’ Britain, with power draining away from Downing Street. And this could have real-world consequences for the economy going beyond gossip, with the Bank of England maintaining a cautious approach to interest rates, and the uncertainty in Westminster making investors nervous.

When a Prime Minister is under fire, bold reforms get pushed to the back burner, and we are already seeing this play out with housing targets. Industry analysts are increasingly calling the 1.5 million aim ‘fanciful’ as the political capital needed to force planning changes through is being spent on managing party rebellions.

The key drivers here are high-profile columnists and disillusioned backbenchers, who are linking political failure directly to the housing slump. Their argument: If the government cannot manage its own party, how can it manage the biggest building programme in 50 years? This link is potentially dangerous for the Labour brand, turning a technical policy failure into a perceived character flaw of leadership.

Supply Chain Shocks And Creative Solutions

While influential players argue in London, other stories show how the crisis is hitting the ground in different ways. The GMB Union has raised a red flag regarding brick manufacturing, pointing out a ‘nonsensical’ energy policy that gives relief to mortar makers but excludes brick kilns. This has led to factories idling and stockpiles growing, even as the country begs for more homes. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs from GMB is a key driver here, aiming to protect manufacturing jobs and pointing out the disconnect in government strategy.

Concurrently, there are creative, and controversial, attempts to bypass the planning system. In Ireland, the government has approved exemptions for garden homes and modular cabins. While ministers like Micheál Martin champion this as a pragmatic solution to a national emergency, housing advocates like Threshold warn it could lead to a return to substandard ‘beds in sheds‘.

In Kent, Hallam Land is testing the new grey belt rules with a 300-home proposal in Sevenoaks. This has sparked a familiar villager versus developer trope,, with local residents calling it an ‘absolute joke’, and the developer characterising the move instead as a ‘sympathetic expansion’. This story could be a preview of the many battles that will take place across the UK as the Government attempts to reclassify green belt land.

What This Means For Comms Professionals

For PR and public affairs professionals, this data suggests that supply vs demand messaging won’t get attention from the press, or from stakeholders. Campaigns focusing on building more should make way for updates on what is being built, where it is, and who it is for:

The suitability message: The focus is shifting to family-sized homes and ‘intelligent density’. If representing a developer, lead with how projects fit the local population’s specific needs, not the contribution to a national target.

Infrastructure first: The Sevenoaks story shows that local opposition is still rooted in infrastructure fears (doctors, schools, traffic). Communicators must address these points before they talk about the houses.

Everything is political: Housing is being used as a means to criticise the current UK leadership. Any project that stalls can be framed as a failure of the Government – be prepared for your project to become a political pinball.

Supply chain transparency: The brick and energy crisis shows that the how of building is just as important as the where. There is a space for thought leadership on industrial strategy and how it supports housing.

The UK housing crisis is currently enmeshed in a collection of competing crises, with a construction crisis, a planning crisis, and a leadership crisis all happening at once. The narrative has moved from a debate about numbers to a complex argument about aesthetics, family needs, and industrial viability.

Navigating this environment requires an understanding of the perspectives that are gaining traction and the key drivers and stakeholders who are shifting public opinion. The data from Lumina shows that the winners in this debate will be those who can bridge the gap between policy ambition and the reality on the ground. By staying ahead of emerging trends in the press, communicators can help shape a more constructive conversation.

Find out more about the closer alignment between public affairs, communications, and the political press here.

Greater Anglia

May 1, 2026/in Stakeholder Engagement, Canvas, Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, News Distribution /by Vuelio UK

Stroke Association

April 30, 2026/in Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, News Distribution, Canvas /by Yi Chen Lin

The LLM visibility gap: Why PRs need to earn attention in AI answers

April 29, 2026/0 Comments/in Politics, PR, Communications, Media, Public Affairs Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Lumina Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

The communications landscape has been transformed by the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the traditional tools of PR have had to evolve to keep up. For organisations operating in a world of fragmented media and accelerating sharing, AI must be utilised as a tool, but also treated as an influential stakeholder.

The challenge has taken PR & Comms professionals beyond traditional media monitoring, with success now also depending on whether Large Language Models (LLMs) recognise your organisation, your clients, and your messaging, and include them in their generated answers. If absent from AI summaries, your organisation risks becoming invisible to a generation of users who rely on these systems for their primary information.

AI can be a blocker, or a connector

AI is a powerful stakeholder in its own right, and like any other stakeholder, can’t be ignored.

During Vuelio webinar ‘AI as the new PR & comms stakeholder‘, the University of Huddersfield’s Dr Anne Gregory highlighted how the growing dependence on these tools is reshaping how we practice communications.

‘AI is much more than just an assistant; it is a powerful actor in the information ecosystem.

‘It mediates our engagement with organisations and individuals, and evidence is emerging that AI is often believed more than other traditional sources.’

This shift in trust represents a significant risk for those caught unprepared. If an LLM synthesises a narrative about your client or brand that is factually flawed, or omits your perspective entirely, the speed at which that ‘truth’ takes hold is fast.

However, many PR teams still aren’t paying significant attention to this. Purposeful Relations‘ Stuart Bruce highlighted how teams currently allocate their resources as just one example.

‘If you look at where budgets and effort are currently directed, the focus remains heavily on social media influencers,’ he observed. ‘Meanwhile, far less attention is paid to AI answers, which are becoming significantly more influential and persuasive.’

‘Invisible’ organisations

Media fragmentation has made it harder than ever to maintain a coherent narrative. Between political volatility, geopolitical shifts, and the sheer volume of digital noise, the feedback loop of communications is compressing. In this environment, comms teams need to go beyond monitoring and interpreting to anticipating and ‘pre-bunking’.

Because the risk of being ignored by LLMs is a commercial one. Gartner’s recent report ‘Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies‘ highlighted a critical shift for Chief Communications Officers (CCO) towards Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).

Gaining visibility in AI answers doesn’t require a skill set completely new to comms professionals, however. The shift can be simple: to be included in an AI answer, your organisation must provide enough digital touchpoints for the model to verify your information as reliable.

As Stuart Bruce puts it: ‘AI creates content in the same way a journalist or an analyst might, by synthesising countless bits of information from across the web.

‘The more touchpoints the AI finds to verify a fact, the more likely it is to include it. If we don’t create an environment where the AI can find enough evidence of our perspective, it simply won’t give it.’

Closing the gap

The secret to a successful campaign in 2026 and beyond lies in ensuring your key facts, executive commentary, and brand milestones are structured and accessible to LLMs – placing information in enough reputable digital locations (from media outlets to white papers and official statements) that an AI agent perceives your narrative as the authoritative one.

As Dr Anne Gregory warned: ‘Once a narrative is set, it becomes extremely difficult to counter. This is why PR must come in early. AI agents use information to create their own sources of knowledge; if the data they collect is flawed, the consequences for the organisation are severe.’

PRs continue to be the architects of brand reputation, tasked with influencing both the human audience and the intelligent agents that interpret the world for them.

What’s next?

The organisations that will thrive in this AI-mediated world are those that earn credibility through the discoverability of their message – like the comms outreach of old, but evolved.

At Vuelio, our platform is built to support exactly this kind of purposeful communication, with our Lumina suite continuing to evolve to meet the needs of today’s comms teams. Whether you are in-house or agency, the goal remains the same: to ensure that when AI is asked a question about your sector, your organisation, or your clients, your voice is the one it uses to provide the answer.

Find out more about Lumina.

AAUK

April 25, 2026/in Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, News Distribution, Canvas /by Yi Chen Lin

AI is the new stakeholder for PR and comms

AI is the new PR & comms stakeholder

April 23, 2026/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, Media Media Database, Media Monitoring, Political Services, PR, Press and Bloggers, Lumina Blog Posts /by Phoebe-Jane Boyd

Artificial Intelligence impacts PR & comms in two distinct ways. It transforms how practitioners work with massive volumes of media, and at a greater degree of sophistication and personalisation. At the same time, it’s also a powerful force shaping how information is surfaced, interpreted, and acted upon across the entire communications industry. What’s changed isn’t just ‘how’ you do the work, but your reason for doing it in the first place.

Not sure if you agree? The current landscape makes clear just how important factoring in AI’s influence is. According to Gartner’s latest predictions for 2026, the mass adoption of public Large Language Models (LLMs) as a replacement for traditional search is expected to drive a significant increase in PR and earned media budgets by 2027. To add to this, BCG’s AI Radar global survey found that corporate investments in AI have doubled since last year.

From the PRCA’s recent green paper on responsible AI, to the CIPR’s focus as part of its survey for 2026, the sector is rapidly investing in this future. And with the EU AI Act deadline on the horizon, the urgency for robust governance and planning has never been higher. As Rupert Younger, Director of the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, put it as long ago as 2024: ‘AI is not just a technology, it has become a stakeholder’.

To navigate this new reality, we were joined by Dr Anne Gregory, Professor Emeritus at the University of Huddersfield, and Stuart Bruce, PR Futurist and Co-founder of Purposeful Relations, for our latest webinar, ‘AI as the new PR & comms stakeholder’.

Watch the full webinar here.

In the session, we explored how this new stakeholder is redefining reputation, influence, and strategy.

What kind of stakeholder is AI?

While many across the comms industry still view AI as a digital assistant for finding efficiencies and speeding up elements of our daily responsibilities, Anne argues it has moved into a more active role:

‘In one sense, AI is a compliant assistant, helping us along the campaign creation trail from research to identifying and prioritising stakeholders, tracking sentiment. But even here, it’s doing that in your name and in your organisation’s name. You have to have a stake in its work, because it certainly has a stake in yours.’

‘We’re becoming increasingly dependent on these tools, and they’re shaping our practice and behavior, but AI is much more than just an assistant. It’s a powerful actor in the information ecosystem.’

While AI lacks anything approaching human intentionality (for now…) its algorithmic processes produce significant real-world consequences. It shapes organisational perceptions and mediates engagement with individuals, often presenting summaries that are believed more than traditional sources.

‘AI is becoming a very strong stakeholder,’ said Anne. ‘ I like Dr. Nici Sweaney’s definition of these agents and AI, it’s an accidental stakeholder’.

Stuart Bruce added that there is still significant confusion regarding what AI actually means for practitioners. Purposeful Relations’ research with 72Point revealed that 44% of UK consumers trust AI answers – a figure nearly double the 24% who trust social media influencers:

‘If you look at where budgets and effort goes at the moment, it’s going to social media influencers; it’s not going into what’s happening with AI answers, which are becoming a lot more influential and persuasive.

‘Anne talked about accidental stakeholders – you’ve actually also got the accidental AI users, because even those people that aren’t using AI, they’re still going to be seeing those AI overviews in search. This is where we talk about ‘zero click’, because people are often seeing those answers and going no further.

‘It’s not just about visibility, it’s actually also about accuracy – how your organisation is being portrayed, your leadership, and your people. You’re going to want your particular perspective to be coming out in AI answers.’

The dangers of underestimating AI’s role as a stakeholder

If AI is treated only as a tool or assistant, organisations face substantial reputational risks. Anne warned about the danger of underestimating AI’s power to curate and shape truth:

‘For a lot of people, it has become a source of truth. Maybe PR people are more skeptical of AI than others… but the world isn’t peopled by AI experts or public relations experts. Even though we know these summaries are often incomplete and biased, we tend to believe them. If we don’t regard AI as an influential stakeholder, we could be putting ourselves in jeopardy.’

Anne pointed out the difference with this stakeholder and stakeholders as they’re currently understood, particularly the media.

‘There’s an interesting difference here. If you’ve got a beef with a journalist and you think they’ve not represented you fairly, you can go and have a conversation with that journalist, and you can present them with a case. You can even go to the editor and get some sort of redress. You can’t do that with AI, not in the same way at all.

‘AI is a very powerful and influential stakeholder, but not one that you can necessarily influence back directly. Once a narrative is set, it becomes really, really difficult to counter it. Which is, of course, where PR comes in.’

Trouble can also come if comms practitioners fail to make full use of traditional tools in the PR kit that came way before AI: getting a story out to as many influential sources as possible.

For a practical example, Stuart shared the story of a university industrial dispute. The AI’s narrative was dominated by the trade union’s perspective, because the union had provided multiple touchpoints – website statements, social media, and media quotes. The university, in comparison, having viewed the situation as negative, only responded directly to journalists:

‘The trade union gave them half a dozen quotes – the university gave them one. It just wasn’t credible. This is what AI as a stakeholder actually means. The more touchpoints that AI can find to verify that a piece of information is a fact, the more likely it is to be included in that AI answer.’

Shifting narratives and the speed of change

Anne reflected on the speed of adoption, noting that CIPR’s AIinPR 2018 literature review could not have predicted the current reach of generative models. She admitted that while the PR industry was initially slow to adopt and adapt, it has quickly developed an ‘obsession with tools’ rather than considering the broader implications:

‘We didn’t realise that AI is a stakeholder for the whole organisation. We are only now waking up to the fact that we have an enormous role in the governance of these systems. At the end of the day, we’re talking about the legitimacy of whole organisations.’

Stuart emphasised the need for PR and comms teams to factor AI’s influence into strategies now, particularly to curtail false narratives, misinformation, and disinformation:

‘If organisations aren’t doing something now, it’s too late.

‘NATO published a paper on misinformation and disinformation and one of the concepts that NATO talks about a lot is “pre-bunking” and “inoculation” – making sure that your information is out there. And that’s what you need to do with AI – it’s too late to wait, and watch, and see. You actually need to be making sure that it understands your perspective now – it’s not just as simple as dealing with a truculent journalist or an activist group. AI is influenced by a multitude of sources.’

Navigating governance and internal responsibility

With a lack of one source of truth regarding the ethical use of AI, Stuart highlighted the importance of ‘living and breathing’ internal governance and responsibility, involving continuous training and feedback loops:

‘Too often what people try to do is create an AI policy, and on its own, that’s fairly meaningless. Governance is something entirely different. The policy only means something if you’ve done some training to go with it.’

Stuart introduced the concept of a ‘social license’ for AI — gaining trust from other stakeholders, internal and external, for how an organisation embraces the technology.

‘It’s making sure that it’s not just about how you as PR people or comms people are using AI, but how the organisation is embracing it. How on earth do we get trust from all of our other stakeholders for the things that we might want to do with AI? How do we bring our employees with us? How do we make sure that we’re using it in the most sustainable way possible?

‘What are we doing to address issues around bias and inclusivity, fairness and access? The answer is going to be different for each organisation.’

What can the industry do now to work with this new stakeholder?

Both speakers offered critical advice for practitioners to follow now. Anne urged the comms industry to continue to question what AI offers and evolve their approach as the technology changes:

‘Constantly ask yourself three questions: Why are we using AI? How is it built? And who is it going to be affecting?

‘Remember, it’s not just an agent at your service; it’s an equaliser of power that takes a stake in you and your organisation as much as you use it to influence others.’

Stuart expressed concern that hype, and confusion, around terms like Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is turning a portion of comms people off of thinking about the ramifications of AI as a stakeholder:

‘There is a lot of hype, but the fundamental point remains: you must renew your communication strategy. If comms people aren’t thinking about this this year, they’re going to be in real trouble.’

Simple tips for AI-friendly outreach

When asked for tips on making media outreach more AI-friendly, Stuart was adamant: do not write for machines.

‘We should still 100% be writing for humans. However, it’s possible to write for humans in an AI-friendly way so that AI can understand and read it as well.’

He identified three factors AI prioritises:

Recency: AI likes fresh content to supplement its training data. If you have a research report, keep refreshing it with new aspects.

Relevance: AI recognises specialist niche titles and trade media. Some syndicate titles that practitioners sometimes sneer at are actually vital because AI uses them to fill data gaps.

Reputation: AI looks for ‘proof points,’ like whether a spokesperson has a matching biography on the website or a consistent LinkedIn profile.

Stuart suggested that practitioners must broaden their scope of stakeholders. While first-tier earned media remains important, much of it is hidden behind paywalls. AI will look elsewhere for information:

‘When a comms team is doing outreach, if the CEO has got a limited time to do interviews, it changes the priority of the ones we’re going to accept. When we talk about owned media – not just necessarily talking about your own owned media – often we’re talking about partners, suppliers, or customers, and what they’re publishing and sharing.

‘We are in public relations – the key word is “relations”. Sometimes we focus on two small a segment of stakeholders. We might look at the media, we might look at politicians, but it needs to be a lot broader than that.

‘We really need to understand all of the relationships that an organisation has and think about whether we can manage those relationships in a better way, but also what impact that’s going to have on AI answers, because it is going to have an impact on both.

‘Fundamentally, organisations need relationships to exist. You can’t exist in a vacuum, so it’s important that we get this right.’

And to finish on a positive note: Anne saw great opportunity for public relations’ new stakeholder in AI – bringing new ways to connect and relate:

‘That’s one positive thing that AI can help us with. Look at the spread of relationships that are going to help us get traction with a whole range of other organisations, and influential people.’

For more on how AI is speeding up the spread of information – and challenges to the comms industry – check out our previous webinar ‘AI, Disinformation and the Risks They Pose for Communicators Today‘ with Thomas Barton, Executive Director of the Council for Countering Online Disinformation and CEO of Polis Analysis.

Great Western Air Ambulance Charity

April 20, 2026/in Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis, News Distribution, Canvas /by Yi Chen Lin

Home improvement advice, running coaches and gardening experts: How to get UK press coverage in April 2026

April 16, 2026/0 Comments/in PR Pulse, PR, Communications, Media Journalist Enquiry Service, Media Database, Media Monitoring, PR, Press and Bloggers Blog Posts /by Andrew Strutt

What are journalists looking to cover in April and beyond? With another big holiday now behind us in Easter, it can be tricky to know what topics might stand out for the media in among all the current affairs and trending issues. From insight via the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service (which is now also available in the Vuelio platform), we share what journalists have been looking for recently and where you can expect to get media coverage over the next month or so.

Interest in home improvements rising

The Home & Garden category is always a popular one on the Journalist Enquiry Service but recently ‘home’ has been cropping up in a lot of enquiries – in March, it appeared in 11% of the total for the month. Within this, there were also around 2% focused solely on ‘interiors’ as journalists look to get experts and comment on ways that people can make home improvements before the summer arrives.

Journalists at Your Home, Livingetc, Homebuilding & Renovating, House Beautiful, Metro, Daily Mail, and Ideal Home all sent enquiries last month relating to the home. These included looking for case studies of interior designers or influencers who have created a beautiful home, expert commentary about using vintage pieces from the 1960s in homes, home storage products to review and for information on a Spring/Summer home, garden & DIY makeover feature.

Going forward? In April last year, ‘home’ appeared in just over 8% of the total requests meaning that journalists will continue to be looking for experts, products to review and case studies for the rest of this month and likely into May as well. Interior designers are particularly popular but anything home-related will have a good chance of securing media coverage in either consumer magazines or websites.

Running and fitness experts in demand

Marathon season is very much upon us with the Brighton marathon taking place last weekend, and Manchester happening this weekend, before London on 26 April. The media has been looking for experts in this field, and ‘running’ has cropped up in 2.5% of requests in March. Journalists have also looked to cover health and fitness more generally as well and ‘fitness’ appeared in just over 2% of the enquiries last month.

The running-related requests have included the best running essentials for beginners inspired by the London Marathon, a physiotherapist specialising in running, and PTs and running experts to provide advice and tips on carbon plate trainers. Meanwhile, the fitness enquiries have seen journalists looking for diet and fitness transformations of women over 40, information on the new wave of wearable health and fitness tech you can talk to, and a physiologist or sports science expert to provide comment for a piece about cardio fitness.

Going forward? We are very much into ‘running season’ right now and the media are regularly looking for experts (running coaches, former athletes, and personal trainers) to help give advice or tips to tie in with their articles. Running appeared in 2% of the total requests in April last year, so we would expect to see similar engagement this year. Fitness more generally is a frequent keyword on the service and normally offers up more opportunities to feature case studies and products to review. If you have experts ready to give comment then they could get coverage in Women’s Health, Men’s Fitness, The Times, Marie Claire, or The Independent as journalists from all these titles sent a request last month.

Gardening tips and advice wanted

With Spring now fully in bloom and better weather (slowly) returning, journalists look to cover gardening tips and tricks to share with their readers. ‘Gardening’ appeared in a little over 5% of all the requests in March with ‘plants/planting’ featuring in 1.5% as the media sought advice on what flowers and shrubs people should be looking to plant during this season.

Journalists at Country Living, Good Housekeeping, PA Media, Gardens Illustrated, and woman & home have all sent gardening-related enquiries in March. These have mainly been asking for experts to answer questions such as solving daffodil blindness, whether you should get rid of caterpillars and about self-seeding plants. There have also been a few case study requests for people who grew their own balcony garden in a city apartment, and for products to review such as lawnmowers and other gardening equipment.

Going forward? April last year saw a similar level of interest in gardening to March this year with 5% of all enquiries being around this topic, and it then increased in May 2025 to over 6%. Journalists will tend to seek out gardening experts to share their advice but there will also be the chance to get products featured and case studies as well.

Other opportunities for PRs in April and beyond

The current war in the Middle East has generated a lot of media attention and that has fed through to the Journalist Enquiry Service as well, particularly in relation to ‘energy’ which appeared in just over 3% of the requests last month. The war’s impact on gas and oil prices has been the main focus of journalists sending requests and we are likely to see more enquiries regarding energy experts and analysts to share their insight going forward over the next few weeks and months.

Another topical issue is the ‘environment’ and that cropped up in 3% of all enquiries in March. With Earth Day taking place on 22 April, there is likely to be a greater focus from the media on this topic. If you have environmental experts or case studies of people that are making a difference to reduce their impact on climate change and global warming, then they could well get national or broadcast coverage.

Want to get the most out of the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service? Find out how here.

Jack & Grace

April 14, 2026/in News Distribution, Stakeholder Engagement, Canvas, Media Database, Media Monitoring, Media Analysis /by Yi Chen Lin