PR in the Age of AI

For years, businesses have fought for the same prize online: a place near the top of Google.

But the rules of discovery are changing.

Increasingly, customers aren’t typing a handful of keywords into a search engine and working their way through a page of links. They’re asking AI a question.

• Who is the best supplier for this?
• Which company should I use?
• Who is the trusted expert in this field?

And instead of receiving ten blue links and being left to make their own decision, they’re increasingly being presented with something far more powerful: an answer.

For Alison Shadrack, founder and CEO of Adia PR, that shift presents one of the biggest opportunities for SMEs in years.

Speaking at Elite Business Live 2026, she argued that AI is rapidly evolving from a research tool into a recommendation engine, and businesses need to start thinking seriously about whether they are giving it enough reasons to recommend them.

Her question to business owners was simple. Are you showing up?

From searching to asking

The distinction matters.

Traditional search largely puts the burden of research on the customer. Search for a service, and you receive a list of websites. You then click, compare, read reviews and decide which company appears most credible.

Generative AI changes that relationship.

As Shadrack explained, platforms are increasingly synthesising information and providing users with a recommendation rather than simply pointing them towards somewhere they might find an answer.

That means visibility is no longer just about where your website ranks. It’s also about what the internet says about you. And, crucially, whether AI considers those signals sufficiently credible to include your business in its answer.

Shadrack encouraged business owners to test this for themselves by asking AI the questions their prospective customers might use: who is the trusted expert in their field, which businesses are considered the best, or how their company compares with a competitor.

The results might be illuminating.

They might also be uncomfortable!

AI can’t recommend what it doesn’t know

This is where PR enters the equation.

Businesses have traditionally viewed PR as a way of securing visibility: getting their founder interviewed, landing coverage in a respected publication or having a product reviewed.

Shadrack believes its value is now considerably broader. When an independent publication talks about a company, publishes its expertise or profiles its founder, it creates a third-party signal of credibility. That’s valuable to humans. Increasingly, it’s valuable to AI too.

Shadrack’s argument is that earned media – other people writing and talking about your business, is becoming an important source from which AI can establish credibility and authority.

That creates an interesting new role for PR.

It’s no longer simply about getting people to see your business. It’s about building a body of evidence that your business deserves to be trusted.

Trust hasn’t changed. The audience has

Perhaps the most interesting point Shadrack made was that, despite all the excitement surrounding AI, the fundamentals of reputation haven’t really changed.

• Businesses have always grown through trust.
• Do good work.
• Build expertise.
• Earn recommendations.
• Develop relationships.
• Become known for something.

Do that consistently enough and people begin referring others to you.

Shadrack has built much of her own business through exactly that process. What’s changing is who, or perhaps what, is assessing those signals. “AI is doing exactly the same. It’s no different. It’s looking for those signals of trust, of authority.”

In other words, building a reputation that works for humans may increasingly help build one that works for machines.

Your founder matters more than you think

That has important implications for founders who prefer to remain behind the scenes.

People want to know who sits behind a company.

According to Shadrack, AI does too.

Founder interviews, profiles, expert commentary and thought leadership all help establish who someone is, what they know and why their expertise should carry weight.

The same applies to awards, professional credentials and industry recognition. For SMEs competing against organisations with significantly larger marketing budgets, that’s potentially encouraging.

Shadrack described discovering that her own relatively small PR business was outperforming much larger agencies for AI visibility as something of a “David versus Goliath” moment.

Size alone doesn’t necessarily determine authority. The quality and consistency of the signals surrounding a business matter too.

Stop writing solely for keywords

There is another important shift taking place.

People speak to AI differently from the way they traditionally search Google.

They ask questions.

That means businesses should start thinking about the questions their prospective customers genuinely want answered.

Shadrack suggested building those answers into FAQs, articles and other website content, alongside case studies demonstrating how the business actually helps its customers. Founder biographies and ‘About’ pages matter too, particularly when the information they contain is consistent with what appears elsewhere online… That last point is important!

AI has considerably more information to work with when a company’s expertise is corroborated across multiple sources.

• Your website says one thing. A trade association says something similar.
• An interview demonstrates your expertise. An award establishes recognition.
• A publication quotes your founder. A customer case study provides evidence.
• Individually, each may have value. Together, they start creating authority.

You probably have more PR stories than you realise

One barrier for SMEs is the belief that they aren’t interesting enough for journalists.

Shadrack was unequivocal on this point.

She told the audience she could sit down with virtually any business owner in the room and find potential media opportunities. And those opportunities don’t necessarily require earth-shattering company news.

• Thought leadership can work.
• Expert advice can work!
• Opinions on developments within your industry can work.
• Original research and statistics can work.

Product reviews, customer case studies and genuine company news can all create reasons for third parties to talk about a business.

The key is understanding what will genuinely interest the publication’s audience rather than simply what the company wants to promote.

That requires something decidedly old-fashioned: knowing journalists and understanding what they write about.

During the Q&A, Shadrack stressed the importance of researching the journalists’ business approach and ensuring the story is genuinely relevant to their readers.

Relationships take time to build, she acknowledged, but getting the right story in front of the right person remains fundamental.

AI hasn’t killed traditional PR. It may actually have made good PR more valuable.

Reputation is a compounding asset

There is, however, no magic press release that suddenly makes a business an AI favourite.

Shadrack described reputation building as a compounding process. One piece of media coverage can generate visibility. But sustained authority requires consistency. PR, SEO, website content, founder visibility and other brand-building activity shouldn’t therefore operate as separate exercises. Shadrack described how PR activity for one client worked alongside SEO and generative engine optimisation, with the combination helping the business achieve stronger positioning.

Her recommendation wasn’t to chase enormous quantities of coverage, but to build it steadily, suggesting two or three pieces each month as a realistic aim. Over time, that “drip, drip” effect builds credibility. And credibility builds authority.

Don’t abandon everything you already know

There is an important caveat.

None of this means Google, social media or traditional marketing suddenly cease to matter.

Shadrack was keen to emphasise that businesses still need to attract customers through existing channels. Social media remains important, as do websites and search. AI visibility should sit alongside those activities rather than replace them.  That may actually be the most reassuring part of her argument. Because despite the extraordinary technology involved, the strategy isn’t particularly futuristic.

• Be useful.
• Demonstrate expertise.
• Build relationships.
• Earn credible coverage.
• Show evidence of what you’ve achieved.
• Tell people who you are.

And make sure the story you’re telling about your business is consistent wherever someone, or something, encounters it.

The businesses AI trusts will be the businesses people already trust

AI may be changing how customers discover companies, but it isn’t necessarily changing why they choose them.

• Trust still matters.
• Authority still matters.
• Reputation still matters.

The difference is that businesses now have another audience assessing those signals.

For SMEs, that could represent an enormous opportunity. Because competing for AI recommendations doesn’t necessarily mean having the largest advertising budget or the biggest marketing department. It means creating enough credible evidence across the web for your expertise to become difficult to ignore.

So perhaps there is one question every business owner should type into AI after reading this: Would you recommend my company?

If the answer isn’t what you hoped for, Shadrack’s message is clear.

Start giving it better reasons to say yes.

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