New York: Burson has released a new report, The Credibility Paradox, highlighting a critical challenge facing brands in the era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): being visible in AI-generated responses does not necessarily mean being believed.
The study, based on more than 55,000 believability scores across 85 companies, found significant differences in how audiences perceive AI-generated answers about brands and organizations. Notably, business decision-makers rated AI-generated responses as 10% more believable on average than the general population, underscoring the need for brands to tailor their reputation-building efforts to specific stakeholder groups.
The research marks a shift in the GEO conversation from a technical focus on visibility and source citations to a broader strategic emphasis on credibility and reputation management.
“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 synthesizes, summarizes and delivers information directly to audiences. Showing up in these LLMs is necessary but not sufficient. 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.”
For the study, Burson partnered with Profound, an AI marketing platform, to evaluate thousands of reputation-related responses generated across seven major AI answer platforms. The research assessed 85 companies through the lens of Burson’s Reputation Capital framework, which measures eight key dimensions: Innovation, Creativity, Workplace, Products, Financial Performance, Governance, Citizenship, and Leadership.
Using Burson’s proprietary Decipher tool, developed in collaboration with cognitive AI company Limbik, responses were assigned believability scores across three audience segments: General Population, Opinion Elites, and Business Decision Makers.
Among the report’s key findings was that AI systems reward evidence-based narratives over positioning statements. Fact-based claims linked to innovation, products, and workplace culture consistently achieved higher believability scores than claims associated with leadership, governance, or citizenship.
The study also identified workplace reputation as an underutilized driver of credibility. Workplace-related AI responses emerged as the most believable among the general public, reflecting AI models’ reliance on independently verifiable sources such as employee reviews, labor reporting, and earned media coverage.
Leadership, however, proved to be one of the most difficult reputation dimensions for AI-generated responses to validate. According to the report, leadership-focused answers ranked among the least believable across industries, unless supported by governance frameworks, strong business performance, and third-party validation.
The research further revealed significant variations in how different stakeholder groups interpret AI-generated narratives. Business decision-makers showed greater receptiveness to innovation-focused messaging and business context, while broader consumer audiences demonstrated higher skepticism.
To address these challenges, Burson has developed a new framework designed to help organizations build and safeguard reputation across AI-driven environments. The approach integrates earned, owned, and social media strategies into a unified reputation ecosystem aimed at strengthening credibility across AI-generated responses.
Commenting on the findings from an Asia-Pacific perspective, Red Surtida, APAC Head of Intelligence & Transformation, said, “Across APAC, much of the conversation around AI has centered on whether brands appear in AI-generated answers, while far less attention has been given to whether those answers are accurate, credible, and believable. That is the gap our report addresses. As AI becomes an increasingly influential layer between companies and their stakeholders, it is shaping not only how brands are discovered, but also how they are understood and evaluated. The real opportunity for organizations is not simply to secure share of answer, but to ensure those answers are grounded in evidence, backed by credible sources, and believable to the audiences that matter most.”
Highlighting the growing importance of reputation management in AI-powered environments, Steve Rubel, EVP, Media Insights & Measurement, Burson, added, “GEO began as a visibility challenge quantified by audit reports. The data from this study makes clear it has become something more consequential: a test of whether the reputation a company has earned in the real world is legible, corroborated and believable in the AI-mediated environments where audiences are increasingly forming their opinions. Our framework gives communicators a practical path forward and establishes GEO as a new domain in reputation management.”
The report suggests that as AI increasingly becomes an intermediary between brands and stakeholders, organizations will need to focus not only on appearing in AI-generated answers but also on ensuring those responses are credible, evidence-backed, and trusted by the audiences they seek to influence.
