While some communications professionals view AI as a threat, others are quickly figuring out ways to use these phenomenal new tools to turbocharge longstanding strategies and tactics that drive results. It’s in that spirit that we are sharing a couple of use cases from 3BL clients.

• Prompt Discovery Index – One of our clients has written more than 100 prompts for top AI search engines, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and CoPilot.  By running a monthly report, the client can see how effective her content distribution program has been in influencing generative AI to incorporate her brand’s narrative into the answers generated by AI engines. This client has an “intentional repetition” formula of using 3BL to tell stories through press releases, videos, articles, case study reports, and other formats. The goal is to show up ahead of competitors in the large language models (LLMs) used by the AI chatbots. Her “prompt discovery index” is growing every month and is now more important than the SEO reports her organization used for many years to improve visibility in search and social. 

• AI Notices – One clever PR pro, Gab Ferree, recently rebranded a press release as “AI Notices.” They are being used as a generative AI release strategy, but with a deliberate inclusion of more facts and content than is normally found in traditional media or consumer-focused communications. A recent Muck Rack survey found that AI search engines viewed content distributed by services like 3BL as “earned media.” Because many Tier One news outlets are suing AI search engines to block inclusion of their licensed content in results, there is an opportunity to achieve strong AI search performance through AI notices (aka 3BL flexible media releases) and earned media placements on lesser-known “Tier Zero” blogs and news sites. 

This radical transformation in how consumers, investors, policymakers, employees and other key audiences access information is an opportunity to use 3BL’s powerful distribution network – and the fact that our clients’ content is included by LLMs – to improve trust and commercial results. [MORE: AI is Building a New Trust Economy: Will PR Be Part of It?] We would welcome the opportunity to speak with you about your challenges and map ways 3BL can become a partner as you retool to meet the moment. Image Source: Google Gemini AI 

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. [Learn how trusted distribution works →]

You can’t spell Climate Week without AI. Otherwise, it would be Clmte Week.

All kidding aside, artificial intelligence figured into just about every panel, conference, keynote and forum in New York last week. During the workshop, “How AI is Disrupting Sustainability Reporting,”  I focused on the pitfalls of green hushing. Companies that have stopped talking about their sustainability and impact work stand out like a sore thumb when a record 99 percent of S&P 500 companies are now issuing sustainability reports.

Even mid-cap companies – those in the bottom half of the Russell 1000 Index – issued 2024 sustainability reports in record numbers, 89.7 percent, according to a September 2025 analysis by the Governance and Accountability Institute.

The bots that spider corporate web sites and reporting frameworks quickly locate and ingest reports and filings as soon as they go live. This process ensures that ESG ratings and rankings agencies, investors and other stakeholders have access to a company’s data from the most recent reporting period.   Beyond that annual data dump, what many companies are providing in terms of updates, stories and context is, in actuality, the sound of silence. An analysis of online mentions of hundreds of common terms used in sustainability and impact narratives dropped from 438,000 in 2024 to 396,000 in 2025. The declines in earned media across broadcast, print and online was also seen in corporate-issued updates, according to 3BL’s analysis. 

This green hushing is happening at the same time AI search is changing the way information is found online.  Brands that thought they figured out how to position themselves for Google search are at reputational risk now that AI is eliminating billions of clicks. Imagine reaching a difficult goal, perhaps the best in your industry, and not having it referenced during an AI search.   Without a steady flow of corporate information to the Large Language Models (LLMs) feeding generative search engines, companies risk posts from Reddit and LinkedIn being cited rather than a brand’s news, articles, videos and reports. When there is doubt about whether a company remains committed to sustainability, there is an erosion of trust, according to a survey conducted by 3BL, TriplePundit and Glow, “Say less, risk more: Sustainability silence is undermining trust.”

Silence is no longer neutral. It triggers skepticism with consumers.  If there is one thing I have learned in 15 years working with 3BL’s client base of 1,500 brands, visibility amplifies trust for companies that continue to communicate about their sustainability and impact work.

One of my longtime former co-workers died last month. I very much respected her work and looked in vain for an obituary. Sadly, her life story remains untold beyond occasional posts to her Facebook page. The irony is that she had worked for decades at public relations giants like Carl Byoir and PR Newswire, creating brand stories that withstood the test of time. 

Whether an individual or a company, I am an advocate of telling your own story. Without your framing and perspective, there’s a risk someone will tell your story for you. 

It might be positive, but there’s a pretty good chance of important facts or color being omitted. For individuals, the nonprofit StoryCorps has made the process easy. Audio interviews may be contributed at no charge by anyone, and they become part of the permanent collection at the Library of Congress. I smiled today listening to an interview with my favorite high school teacher, J. Ernest DuBois. 

For companies, the art of storytelling is evolving quickly due to changes in the way people and machines gather information. Just a few years back, a corporate website optimized for search engines did the trick. On top of that, brands routinely posted to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – and they pitched stories to business reporters at dailies and trade pubs. Today, those typing a query into a browser search bar are likely to see results from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that may or may not be indexing a corporate website. The large language models (LLMs) feeding Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT are becoming the new Google Search. Social platforms have been politicized, and angry comments from trolls often poison even the most innocuous posts from a CEO or company. 

The collapse of the paid media model that supported most news sites has hastened an already alarming trend of belt-tightening by debt-heavy media companies. The few remaining reporters inside once-bustling newsrooms are now chasing scandals and breaking news stories rather than features, profiles, and enterprise reporting. But demand for information about companies and what they stand for is growing exponentially.  And the stakes are enormous. Research conducted last year by 3BL, TriplePundit, Glow, and Cint found that consumers switching brands for sustainability reasons represent a $44 billion opportunity across 12 U.S. industries. This means that a significant amount of revenue is shifting towards companies that are perceived as more sustainable. Companies stand to gain a competitive and reputational advantage by actively sharing stories about reducing emissions and waste, using less water, and caring for their employees and communities. Those brands that move beyond a static, annual sustainability report and embrace an approach of always-on storytelling can measure the return on investment through employee recruitment and retention, inclusion in respected ratings and rankings, and in sales. Brand journalism, when combined with audience insights and an engagement strategy built for AI LLMs, is fast becoming a best practice for companies with good stories to tell.