Rethinking Visibility: How AI Reshapes the Role of Public Relations

The public relations (PR) industry is being reshaped by artificial intelligence. As AI transforms how information is discovered, evaluated and trusted, PR professionals must rethink what it means to be “visible”.

Information now has a new gatekeeper. Besides editors, journalists, or even social media algorithms, large language models and search agents now also play a role in surfacing information about brands, products, organisations and people. 
So, how can PR adapt to the rise of this new channel of information, one that can generate answers instead of quoting the ones carefully crafted by PR? 

Google AI Overview, citing Medianet’s media monitoring guide as a trusted source.

From coverage to citability

With 81% of leaders expecting AI Agents to be part of their strategy in the next 12-18 months, and 39% of skills to be transformed or outdated by 2030, PR will be no exception. The good news is that the essence of PR (building trust, shaping narratives, and guiding public understanding) isn't going to change. How it's done, however, already is.

For decades, the success of PR campaigns has been measured by narratives shaped through trusted news and media outlets. But the definition of visibility has fundamentally evolved. The evening news,  the front page, or even social media alone are no longer the only arbiters of information.

Today, people seek direct answers from AI-powered systems: ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity. What they receive isn't a list of links, but a synthesised direct response.

In this new information order, visibility lies not only in media coverage but also in being found, cited, and trusted by the AI models people turn to consult. At the same time, media coverage becomes even more critical because LLMs consider traditional media as a credible source. 

So, PR teams have now become incredibly important to gain visibility in the LLM era, but also need to think differently about their strategy to ensure brands are surfaced when people are asking questions that your business or expertise can answer best.

PR content must now serve both human readers and AI systems.

The new rules to master search engine visibility 

Google's AI Overviews often offer “zero-click” responses, providing answers without directing users to external sites. This is unfamiliar territory, and it is where Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) emerge as critical extensions to traditional SEO. 

While AEO and GEO are closely related and share many underlying principles, they have slightly different primary goals and focus areas. AEO helps your content be cited as a direct, concise answer to user queries - think of Google's featured snippets or voice assistant responses. GEO optimises your content for use by generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini), ensuring your insights are synthesised and reused in more comprehensive outputs.

In short,

AEO = Direct answers, expert quotes, soundbites.

GEO = Broader context, thought leadership, industry reports.

Together, they build on traditional SEO, but instead of just helping people find your content, they help AI understand and feature it. These methods prioritise content that AI models can easily interpret, extract, and reuse, elevating the role of semantic clarity – meaning all your content, from FAQs to blog posts and whitepapers, is incredibly clear, precise, and unambiguous for both humans and machines – over backlinks. 

Apart from that, it should also be;

• Logically structured (eg, consider a blog post using clear headings like 'Introduction,' 'Key Benefits,' 'How It Works,' and 'Conclusion,' with information under each heading presented in bullet points or concise paragraphs that flow predictably)
• Authored or endorsed by credible experts
• Designed to answer specific, anticipated user queries

Owned media, including blogs, thought leadership, and resource centres, must be meticulously structured for machine comprehension if they are going to be visible to AI systems.

Anticipatory content: Answer before you're asked

Google's AI Overview pulling tips on how to get your press release picked up, including a featured result from Medianet. It's a clear example of how anticipatory content earns prime visibility in AI-generated answers.

A PR strategy must shift from reactive storytelling to proactive knowledge design.

AI systems like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity surface the most relevant, structured, and trusted content in response to a user’s question. That means your brand needs to show up not just in coverage, but in answers.

To do that, PR teams must adopt an anticipatory mindset:

• What questions are people likely to ask about your brand, your industry, your competitors, or the problem your product solves?
• Can AI easily extract and cite your response?

This approach goes beyond traditional SEO or digital PR. While traditional SEO focuses on ranking for known search terms and digital PR aims to earn coverage and backlinks, anticipatory content positions your brand as the answer, even to questions users haven’t thought to ask yet.

To be effective, this content must be factual and evergreen, offering insights that remain relevant over time. In order to achieve that content should be:

• Structured for machines, using clear formatting like headings, bullet points, tables, and concise summaries to aid AI comprehension.
• Be contextual and credible - authored or endorsed by experts and backed by data - so that AI systems view it as a trusted source worth citing.

Rethink distribution beyond the pitch

Owned media, such as LinkedIn articles and corporate blogs, play an important role in supporting AEO. But when it comes to AI-generated visibility, earned media remains king.

Recent research supports this. A study analysing 250,000 citations across 40,000 AI responses found that platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity heavily favour third-party content over owned media. Another report revealed that 77% of AI citations point to formats like press releases and expert commentary published on authoritative sites.

Citation behaviours also vary by different large language models (LLMs) platforms. ChatGPT and Perplexity tend to cite respected news sources and industry databases. This plays to PR’s core strength: shaping how information is understood and trusted. AI may be changing how people find information, but it’s still the public relations that defines what’s worth finding.

AI may now be the new gatekeeper, but the role of PR hasn’t changed; it’s just expanded. They are still in the business of building trust, shaping narratives, and guiding public understanding. No other discipline understands how to generate earned media with credibility quite like PR. Nor is there a field more equipped to create long-form, brand-relevant content, exactly the kind of material generative AI relies on. This makes PR not just relevant, but foundational to how AI platforms shape public understanding.

The difference is that now, the industry needs to design strategies that influence both human and machine scales.

This moment calls for leadership - the kind that understands the enduring power of credible storytelling, but also the urgency of structure, clarity, and technical fluency.

PR’s influence won’t disappear in an AI-first world. On the contrary, it’s never been more essential.

📎📎📎

How to get your media release cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot? Click to read.