Time for Marketers to think about AI Brand Safety
Marketers will be familiar with brand safety, the practice of protecting a brand’s reputation by ensuring that its advertising does not appear alongside inappropriate, harmful, or controversial content.
But what about AI brand safety? With AI or LLM search fast replacing traditional internet search what answers chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overview give will determine how people discover and consume information about you. More importantly, they also determine how people would interact with you.
The urgency to come to grips with AI brand safety was underlined from a report by Ecommurz through their Instagram account. The ever-imaginative Indonesian scammers are now manipulating Google’s AI features.
How the AI scams work
How the scammers operate is by creating multiple accounts in various support websites. They then “train” the AI by asking questions related to the customer service line for popular e-commerce services like Shopee and Tokopedia.
Other accounts then reply to these forum questions, pretending to help by directing users to contact certain numbers via WhatsApp or other messaging apps.
What they have done is to exploit one of AI search’s features - its preference to base its answers or recommendations from UGC content in forums, discussion groups.
What can brands do about such AI-related scams?
Like what they do in conventional PR and crisis management, brands need to monitor what goes on in AI.
A simple and basic method to give you a snapshot of your AI visibility is to “ask” or prompt a few chatbots with questions users are likely to ask about your brand. Collate the answers and you’ll get. Rough picture of what’s being said. Compile the citations for these answers and you’ll have an idea what the source of their information, or disinformation.
Conducting a more comprehensive AI visibility audit will enable you to know how you show up in AI searches and intercept disinformation and misinformation when it occurs. You can do so by approaching the websites and forums to ask them to correct the information and ensure that they carry the proper narrative about their brands.
Maverick, through its years specializing in reputation management and crisis management, has launched MavGEO Services to maintain clients’ AI Brand Safety by monitoring their AI visibility and intervening if we spot any misinformation or disinformation.
To know more about this service, write to [email protected].
