AI is Building a New Trust Economy: Will PR Be Part of It?
By Charlie Wilkie, 3BL CEO
The next battle in communications won’t be for reach. It’ll be for something far more valuable: credibility. Because AI isn’t just changing how we write. It’s deciding who gets heard.
The pattern we should’ve seen coming
OpenAI is building an ad platform for ChatGPT. Google’s sliding “sponsored” links into AI search results. Microsoft beat them to it with Bing Chat.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same playbook search ran 20 years ago: free access first, monetization later.
Every major platform eventually sells what it organizes. Search organized information and sold attention. Social media organized connections and sold influence. AI organizes trust, not by judging it, but by scaling what the web has already learned to trust. This time, the product isn’t attention — it’s credibility.
The new gatekeepers
Here’s what most people miss: Language models don’t use just any source to create responses. They digest what exists — and, crucially, what they’ve learned to trust.
Early audits show something uncomfortable: AI assistants lean heavily on established outlets — CNN, BBC, The New York Times. The top ten capture nearly 80 percent of citations. Everyone else fights for scraps.
But there’s a bigger problem — those credible platforms are vanishing.
The trust vacuum
Journalism is bleeding while AI feeds. Google’s AI summaries alone could cut publisher traffic by 25 percent — $2 billion in lost revenue.
In the U.S., ad spend on news has fallen by nearly a third since before the pandemic and is four times less than it was in 2013. More than 60 percent of marketers still avoid “hard-news” placements altogether, treating real-world reporting as brand-unsafe. Keyword blocking of terms like war, politics, and climate costs U.S. publishers another estimated $2.8 billion a year, according to the University of Baltimore.
Yet there’s a flicker of reversal. Data from DoubleVerify shows ads on news sites drive nearly 10 percent higher engagement than non-news content. Some agencies say clients are reentering news-driven channels — even Fox and CNN — because audiences still trust those environments more than the social media feeds that replaced them.
After years of retreat, brands are rediscovering a basic truth: Reliable context is the real brand-safety filter. Avoiding the news may protect optics in the short term, but it erodes the very ecosystem that makes credibility possible.
Over 10,000 journalism jobs have vanished in the past 3 years. The Los Angeles Times, NBC News, CBS News — gutted. Fewer reporters mean fewer facts checked, fewer sources verified, and fewer reasons for audiences — or algorithms — to trust what they read.
The awkward saviors
Corporate funding now reaches roughly half of U.S. newsrooms — a survival tactic that demands clearer guardrails to protect independence.
The experiments are everywhere — and each carries tension. Tech giants fund fact-checking initiatives while being fact-checked themselves. As ad dollars retreat, surviving outlets turn to the same brands whose marketing budgets once sustained them.
Done wrong, it looks like manipulation. Done right, it’s something else entirely — business investing in the infrastructure of truth.
But what does “right” actually mean? We’re defining those rules in real time, with AI systems watching and learning from every decision. Transparency is the difference between earning trust and buying silence.
When business became the adult in the room
Here’s a number that should make journalists pause: the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer finds business remains the most trusted institution globally at 62 percent — ahead of NGOs (58 percent), government (52 percent), and media (52 percent).
When the public trusts CEOs more than journalists, it’s flattering and terrifying in equal measure. Because when business becomes the most trusted voice, communications stop being marketing. They become part of the information infrastructure society relies on.
How to lead in the age of AI trust
Forget gaming the system. Here’s what actually builds credibility with people — and with the machines now mediating them.
Radical clarity. Publish facts, not spin. Make claims others can verify. Companies that admit challenges alongside successes build authority that lasts.
Consistent verification. Share information where scrutiny still exists: peer-reviewed research, regulatory filings, and credible newsrooms with editorial standards. AI systems are already learning to weigh these sources differently from corporate blogs.
Invest in the ecosystem. Support legitimate outlets through advertising or partnerships, but do it transparently and protect editorial independence.
The tools already exist
None of this is new. Commercial newswires have been part of the trust infrastructure since the 1950s, when PR Newswire and Business Wire became how markets moved. Stock exchanges trusted them. Analysts quoted them. Their structured releases fed the databases that became search algorithms.
At 3BL, we inherited that architecture. Sustainability data now travels the same pathways as financial disclosures carved decades ago. What markets once ignored as “non-material” now drives investment, regulation, and reputation.
The lesson: Trust compounds. Decades of structured, verifiable information built the credibility that AI systems now index — and amplify. Or erase, if we drown it in noise.
The choice
Here’s what could be coming: AI platforms are already experimenting with credibility tiers — ‘verified sources,’ ‘reliable domains,’ whatever they’ll call them. Information from outlets with consistent editorial or third-party verification will rise. Everything else will sink.
That doesn’t mean companies should publish less. It means they should publish differently.
If your releases, reports, or updates can be traced through citations, filings, or credible coverage back to independent verification, AI will treat them as a signal. If they only point back to you—repeated, reworded, or syndicated across your own channels—the systems will learn to classify them as noise. You’re not punished for communicating. You’re punished for circular sourcing.
Every communications budget now does one of two things: It funds trust or floods the pool.
The smart brands are already keeping the water clear — quietly, consistently, before anyone starts charging admission.
And the irony? AI might finally force PR to rediscover its purpose: proving what’s real. Not spinning it. Not amplifying it. Proving it.
Is your content signal or noise?
The age of AI trust is already here. 3BL helps communications leaders make your information traceable, citable, and credible — before the algorithms start deciding for you.