AI in corporate affairs: Reputation at the speed of conflict

Driving into the office, I caught the Business Breakfast on Dubai Eye. The topic: a sophisticated SharePoint vulnerability exploited by China-linked state actors, targeting critical infrastructure in the US and Germany.

The story hit close to home for several reasons. At KROHNE, like many industrial firms, we’re heavily reliant on SharePoint — and in the Middle East, we still operate with physical servers rather than cloud.

While this particular breach didn’t trigger a media frenzy or reputational fallout, the technical expert being interviewed made a key point that stayed with me: AI was used to both accelerate the attack and drive the defence.

This is exactly the position corporate affairs teams now find themselves in. Whether it’s a cyber incident or a reputational one, AI is collapsing the timeline — and redefining the rules.

Reputation and cybersecurity now share the same clock

The SharePoint exploit (CVE-2025-49704 and 49706) wasn’t about PR. It was about exfiltrating cryptographic keys, embedding backdoors, and quietly probing networks.

But had there been a secondary reputational vector — say, falsified press statements or synthetic media targeting stakeholders — the consequences would have unfolded in real time.

In today’s environment, it’s not just what happens — it’s how fast your team knows, responds, and resets the narrative. That’s the shift. Reputation used to be shaped over time. Now it’s shaped in minutes — by algorithms, automated feeds, and sentiment at scale.

AI can hurt you — and help you recover

In the wrong hands, AI can generate fake stakeholder letters, deepfake video statements, or bots impersonating customers and employees. None of this is hypothetical anymore.

But AI can also flag anomalies faster than any analyst, monitor global sentiment in real time, and triage which reputational risks need human escalation.

We’re entering an era where reputation management is no longer about being reactive. It’s about being ready.

Corporate affairs needs tools that talk to each other

Reputation protection is now a team sport — and your comms, legal, and IT functions need shared systems that work at machine speed.

You can’t respond to an AI-generated crisis with manual workflows or defend your CEO’s credibility with a three-day press release process.

And you can’t monitor reputation in real time if your data sits in silos.

This isn’t about new platforms. It’s about interoperability, trust, and readiness.

Three moves to future-proof your reputation function

Scenario-train for AI-infused narrative risks

Crisis simulations often focus on operational impact — downtime, customer data, supply chain disruption. Now is the time to build in parallel simulations around reputational attack vectors:

• What if a deepfake CEO video surfaces at 5pm on a Friday?
• What if AI-generated emails claim your company is withdrawing from a market or cutting staff?

Your legal and communications teams need to be rehearsed, resourced, and empowered to act on gut and data — not wait for permission.

Fuse legal, communications, and digital intelligence

Narrative risk doesn’t sit neatly in one department. AI-generated misinformation might start as a social media post, but it quickly becomes a compliance issue, a market signal, and a legal minefield.

Companies that respond effectively will be those that build cross-functional fluency and fast-track decisions between legal, corporate affairs, and digital monitoring teams.

Invest in an AI-powered reputation audit now — before it’s reactive

Map how your organisation uses AI in customer-facing roles, where your reputational exposure lies across platforms and geographies, and which tools can give you early warning when sentiment shifts.

Think of it as a reputational telemetry system: always-on, integrated, and geared for action.

The SharePoint breach didn’t cause reputational damage, at least as far as we can se — but it could have. The difference wasn’t just security posture.

It was speed, readiness, and system-level awareness. In reputational terms, AI is no longer the future — it’s the terrain.

The companies that come through the next wave of shocks intact won’t be the ones with the most polished messaging. They’ll be the ones who saw the signal first, acted fast, and had the internal fluency to respond with clarity, not chaos.

The question isn’t whether you’ll face a machine-speed narrative threat.

It’s whether you’ll be ready to respond at the same pace — or faster.

By Jonathan Ashton, Head of Marketing and Communications, KROHNE Middle East and Africa