Burson, the global communications agency purpose-built to create value for clients through reputation, has released The Credibility Paradox, a new report showing that there is a variance in how AI-generated answers about brands and companies are believed by audiences.
The original research and findings advance the conversation around generative engine optimisation (GEO) from a technical exercise focused mostly on visibility and sources cited to a strategic reputation opportunity centered on believability.
“In today’s zero-click world, LLMs have become the new gatekeepers of reputation – how brands are discovered and evaluated. But visibility is not credibility,” said Corey duBrowa, CEO, Burson. “AI synthesises, summarises and delivers information directly to audiences. Showing up in these LLMs is necessary but not sufficient.”
duBrowa added, “Our role is no longer just to make clients visible, but to build an evidence ecosystem so robust that the answers AI constructs are believable to the audiences that matter most. This research is our playbook for turning the credibility paradox into a competitive advantage.”
Burson partnered with Profound, a leading AI marketing platform, to field thousands of reputation-related answers across seven major AI answer platforms, evaluating 85 companies across the eight levers of Burson’s Reputation Capital framework: Innovation, Creativity, Workplace, Products, Financial Performance, Governance, Citizenship and Leadership.
Responses were assigned a believability score for three audiences including General Population, Opinion Elites, and Business Decision Makers using Burson’s proprietary Decipher tool, developed with cognitive AI company Limbik, producing more than 55,000 believability forecasts in total.
Key findings from the Burson GEO report
- AI rewards proof, not positioning. Fact-based claims tied to innovation, products and workplace culture consistently outperformed those tied to what might be perceived as more subjective qualities like leadership, governance and citizenship. This underscores a strong mix of earned, owned and social content for GEO, as AI places the greatest weight on independent corroboration from media coverage, reviews and conversation.
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Workplace is an underused credibility lever. As demonstrated in Burson’s Global Reputation Economy research, Workplace is a consistently under-leveraged lever in building reputation capital, and LLMs are no exception. Workplace-related answers are the most believable among the general population, a finding consistent with LLMs’ reliance on independently verifiable sources like talent platform reviews, labour reporting and earned media.
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Leadership is AI’s toughest credibility test. Responses to leadership-related prompts consistently ranked among the least believable across every industry studied. The industries that scored higher – Aerospace and Technology – shared a common thread: The underlying proof came from governance structures, business performance and external validation, not executive messaging alone.
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Believability varies by audience. A narrative that appears credible in an AI answer may not land equally with customers, investors, employees or regulators. Business decision makers rated AI-generated answers +10 per cent more believable on average than the general population, with more specialized audiences more receptive to innovation-led narratives and the business context behind them. Audience-specific GEO analysis is essential.
The findings inform a framework Burson has developed to help clients build and protect reputation across AI surfaces.
Rather than addressing earned media, owned content and social engagement strategies as separate workstreams, the framework approaches them holistically to cultivate an ecosystem of independent, credible voices whose coverage and commentary reinforce that narrative over time.
Burson intends to further integrates language and market-specific nuances to help companies navigate reputation issues across regions and cultures.
“In a region as diverse and complex as EMEA, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is fundamentally a reputation challenge, not just a visibility one,” says Bryn Tweedale, Senior Director, Digital Marketing, Burson UK. “Visibility in an AI-generated answer is just the beginning, as the true benchmark is if the underlying reputation translates across borders. This study makes clear it has become a test of ensuring a brands’ hard-won reputation remains credible and consistent, no matter which market an AI delivers it to.”
