Many companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their external communications, from content creation and media monitoring to the optimisation of websites and other platforms for increased visibility and searchability.

Alongside these opportunities to use AI in creative and productive ways, however, businesses need to be mindful of how AI uses the information they intentionally share through external communications. 

External communication plays a key role in shaping corporate reputation. Sharing positive news can strengthen corporate reputation, while a contentious announcement, poor choice of language (or imagery) or badly managed situation can damage it.

With AI systems drawing on information from across the internet, the content we feed it can directly influence how tools such as Large Language Models (LLMs) describe companies and their activities.

It's therefore becoming increasingly important to ensure that the information we share – whether through company platforms, personal channels or third parties – reflects the way we want our businesses to be seen.

LLMs and other AI tools

LLMs are AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, etc) designed to understand, interpret, summarise and create human language by analysing vast data sets. For companies, these data sets may include publicly available corporate website content, external news articles and other online third party references to the business. LLMs and other AI tools (e.g. Google AI overviews) may use this data to generate information about the company.

Because AI tools take information from such a broad range of sources, the content they generate isn't always correct – and there's no failsafe way to guarantee their accuracy. The catch is that, whether correct or not, many people will trust the information AI tools provide.

AI is, in many respects, what it eats. LLMs don't have opinions of their own – their responses reflect the information available to them: good, bad or inaccurate. 

Well-maintained, authoritative content on official channels or shared by third parties feeds AI tools more reliable information to work with, countering misinformation and helping them to distinguish and promote official company messaging, alongside other benefits such as improved online discoverability.

The role of external communicators

Part of the role of external communications and marketing teams is to ensure that information communicated directly by a company and its employees is accurate, brand-aligned, compliant and free from potentially problematic content.

When something is shared online, it can live for a long time. If that information is shared by others – particularly externally – it can be very difficult to erase. At a time when AI tools are increasingly drawing on publicly available information, we need to be even more mindful of the digital footprint created each time we communicate externally.

And for communicators, it’s unavoidably part of the job to help keep our digital footprint clean and protect corporate reputation.