Glossary · AI Reputation

AI Reputation

The portion of a subject's online reputation that AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot) generate when summarising the subject — driven by the training-data signals the AI was exposed to.

Full Definition

AI reputation is a new, fast-emerging category of reputation work. As AI search and AI chat assistants become primary information surfaces — already 18% of US adults use ChatGPT for queries Google used to handle — the AI's verdict on a subject is becoming the first impression for executive-vetting workflows. Unlike traditional SEO, AI reputation is shaped by which sources the AI was trained on and which it cites. Publications with structured authority (Wikipedia, major newspapers, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, government registries) carry disproportionate weight. AI-readable files (llms.txt, structured data, schema.org) help the AI understand and cite a subject correctly. Ongoing AI-reputation work involves monitoring how each major AI engine summarises a subject, identifying factual errors or framing weaknesses, and shipping content that the next training run will absorb to correct the summary.

In practice

  • An executive asks ChatGPT 'who is [name]?' before a board meeting and receives an inaccurate summary citing a 5-year-old controversy. Reputation work involves correcting the source content, getting Wikipedia updated, and waiting for the next AI training run.
  • A founder's company is summarised by Perplexity using only their press release page. Adding an llms-full.txt file and rich Organization schema gives Perplexity richer context for the next query.

Also known as

GEO · generative engine reputation · LLM reputation