73. The AI Reputation Risk Facing Every Business with Tom Mason from Awareness AI

AI is no longer just helping people find businesses, it is becoming the first version of the business they encounter. That creates a new reputational risk: if ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude describes an organisation badly, cites outdated information, or recommends a competitor, customers may never reach the website at all. The shift from search to answer means companies must stop thinking only about SEO rankings and start managing how AI systems represent them.Tom, founder of Awareness AI, explains why generative engine optimisation is becoming a board-level issue for public-facing organisations. His work shows that models can pull from stale pages, third-party sources, Reddit, X, Google profiles and fragmented data to produce confident but wrong answers. Organisations need to audit what AI says about them, then they need to structure website schema, keep business profiles fresh, publish strong FAQs, and monitor model responses over time. In the AI search era, reputation management starts before the customer even clicks.AI is our Business.UKAI is the Trade Association for AI businesses across the UK. Join us, ukai.co