TL; DR

  • PR is running the AI show (whether the machines admit it or not)
  • Brand mentions are the new backlinks—citations get you seen
  • We’ve been preparing for this since 2017, long before it was cool
  • PESO didn’t change—we just taught it to speak AI
  • Visibility now means showing up in answers, not just on search pages
  • One-off media hits won’t cut it anymore—consistency is king
  • If you’re not in the summary, you’re not in the conversation
  • You already have the strategy—you just need to run it at machine scale

The Headlines Are Catching Up

Lately, I’ve seen a wave of articles, podcast episodes, and headlines declaring that PR is essential to AI visibility. That brand mentions are training large language models. That citations—not keywords—determine whether your company shows up when someone asks AI for a recommendation.

They’re not wrong. But they’re not exactly early to the party either.

What we’re seeing now isn’t a sudden change—it’s a shift that’s been building for a while. Communicators who’ve been paying attention have known this was coming. We’ve been adapting our messaging, content structures, measurement frameworks, and media strategies to meet it.

While this moment is validating, it’s also clarifying. The strategy hasn’t changed. The playing field has.

Trust still matters. Credibility still drives outcomes. Reputation still earns attention. 

We just have new tools—and new audiences (hello, LLMs)—that need to understand who you are, what you stand for, and why you’re worth listening to.

That’s not a reinvention of PR. That’s PR doing what it’s always done—at machine scale.

The PESO Model© Has Adapted

When we started talking about this two years ago, it wasn’t because we had a crystal ball—it’s because we jumped on the AI bandwagon fast, and the signs were already there.

Organic reach was disappearing. Generative AI was making headlines. Search was shifting from “10 blue links” to machine-generated answers. And communicators were quietly being written out of the discovery journey.

So we asked: What happens to your brand when AI summarizes your story? What happens when visibility depends on citations, not search rank?

Based on what was happening, we got to work adapting the PESO Model© to this new era.

In 2023 and 2024, we wrote about:

Heck, even in 2017, we were talking about artificial intelligence and the PR industry. And in 2019, we jokingly tried to spell PR with AI.

During all of this, we attempted to predict the future because we’re constantly thinking about how to evolve the PESO Model for the moment. And what we discovered along the way is what everyone seems to be talking about today: if your brand doesn’t show up in machine-generated answers, it didn’t matter how good your campaign was or how clever your copy sounded.

If AI didn’t see you, no one else would either.

And guess who is best situated to help brands show up? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

The Strategy Hasn’t Changed. The Tools Have.

If it feels like everything in our work is changing at once, I guess it feels that way because it is. But not in a way that demands total reinvention.

You don’t need a new strategy. You just need to update how you execute the one you already have.

The fundamentals of communications haven’t changed. We’re still here to build trust. Shape perception. Drive behavior. Help people understand who you are, what you do, and why they should care.

What has changed is the mechanism of discovery.

Where we used to optimize for traditional search, we’re now optimizing for AI summaries. Where reach once meant clicks, it now includes citations. And where visibility depended on human gatekeepers, we’re now contending with algorithms that decide what shows up—before your buyer sees a single headline or homepage.

This isn’t a shift in philosophy. It’s a shift in physics. (Which makes me happy because I was really, really bad at philosophy in college.)

The good news is: the PESO Model is built for this. It’s always been about integration, consistency, and credibility at scale.

Now, those same qualities are what make a brand visible to machines, too.

How the PESO Model Has Evolved to Meet the Moment

We didn’t build the PESO Model with AI in mind because, of course, it didn’t yet exist in a way that was accessible to all of us.

But it turns out, when machines started summarizing your brand before a human ever Googled you, PESO was already halfway there.

At its core, PESO has always been about integration: creating consistency across channels, building authority with third parties, and using every media type to reinforce your story and earn trust.

That’s exactly what large language models want. They’re not just scanning for keywords. They’re scanning for patterns:

  • Is this brand mentioned often?
  • Is it mentioned consistently?
  • Are those mentions coming from trusted sources?
  • Do they reinforce the same ideas?

So we didn’t throw the model out. We leveled it up.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Owned Media

We’ve moved from “we need more blog posts” to building structured content ecosystems that reinforce key themes—so AI can see topical authority, not just a page with keywords.

Earned Media

It’s still about credibility, but now we also think like machines: Can this placement be cited? Is the brand name consistent? Are we building signals AI will actually use?

Shared Media

Yes, it fuels engagement. But it also reinforces repetition—brand messages, key themes, trusted links—across the platforms AI pulls from.

Paid Media

We use it to patch holes: amplify what’s working, surface what’s not cited yet, and target high-authority audiences that boost overall trust signals.

And running through all of it is a new layer: GEO or Generative Engine Optimization.

Not a shiny new tactic. A mindset. A way of using PESO to teach the machines who you are, what you know, and why they should include you in the answer.

The model hasn’t changed. The context has.

The Future Is Already Crawling Your Content

If you’re just starting to think about AI visibility, you’re not behind—you’re right on time to prepare for what’s coming next. While the headlines are finally catching up, the landscape is still shifting beneath our feet. Fast.

Here’s what you should be watching—and building toward:

  • Multimodal visibility. This means that LLMs aren’t just reading text anymore. They’re analyzing images, charts, layouts, tone, and structure. If your visual content doesn’t match your written narrative, your branding is inconsistent, or your messaging is fuzzy, the machine may not know what to make of you. Consistency now drives clarity—for both humans and AI.
  • Private GPTs and enterprise LLMs. Your buyers may be using internal tools—custom GPTs trained on curated sources—to make decisions. If your brand isn’t showing up inside those walled gardens, you’re invisible. And you may never even know you’ve been left out. That means your trusted, third-party content needs to travel. Not just be published.
  • Hallucination loops. AI tools make mistakes. But once those mistakes get published—and crawled—they can be cited by other tools as fact. That’s how hallucinations become reputational risks. If you’re not actively shaping what’s true about your brand online, the machine might decide for you. And it doesn’t always ask for confirmation. If you see a hallucination about your brand, fix it fast. 
  • Structured trust signals. This is where PESO shines. When all four media types point toward the same themes, use the same language, and reinforce the same story, you build a trust foundation that AI can recognize. One-off wins don’t cut it anymore. Consistency is what gets you into the summary.

The sooner you build for AI discovery, the sooner you future-proof your visibility.

Where to Start

This doesn’t require a total rebuild, but it does require a mindset shift and some tactical upgrades. 

Here’s where to start if you want to ensure that your brand appears in the answers (not just in the archives).

Ask the Machines

Open up ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity—whatever AI tools your audience might use—and run some basic prompts: “What companies offer [your service]?”, “What are the pros and cons of [your product]?”, and “Who are the top experts in [your category]?”

Do you show up? Do you show up accurately? Do your competitors appear when you’re not?

Follow the Footnotes

Check the citations in AI-generated answers. What’s being linked? Are the sources reputable? Are you one of them?

If your best content isn’t getting cited, you may need to rework it for clarity, authority, or structure. And if outdated content is still getting attention, it might be time for a cleanup.

Tighten Your PESO Alignment

Start with your key themes. Are they reinforced across all four media types? Or are you saying one thing in earned media, something else in owned, and letting shared and paid run rogue?

Tactical alignment is what makes you machine-readable. Consistency isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s your visibility engine.

Find (and Fix) the Gaps

No earned validation? AI will assume you’re not credible. No owned content? You’re not reinforcing the message. No shared activity? You’re not building repetition.  No paid support? You’re not closing the loop.

PESO is your diagnostic. Use it to spot the gaps—and then strengthen what’s weak.

Evolve Your Metrics

Clicks and impressions still matter—but now so do citation velocity, AI summary accuracy, and visibility gaps.

This means you need to know how often you are cited in trusted sources, if the machine is getting your story right, and if you can tell why your competitors show up when you do not.

Communicators are uniquely equipped to do this work. We don’t need to become AI prompt engineers. We need to become visibility engineers, which means we must ensure our work teaches the machine the right story.

Lead Through What You Know

AI didn’t rewrite the rules of communications. It just raised the stakes for how clearly, consistently, and credibly we apply them. So don’t throw out your strategy. Align it with how visibility works now—for humans and machines.

The good news?

You already know how to do this. You know how to build trust. Earn credibility. Align messages across teams, channels, and audiences. You’ve been doing it quietly for years, long before AI tools could summarize your work in a sentence.

This is your moment—not to rebrand your role, but to double down on the value you already bring.

So, whether you’ve been evolving your PESO execution for months or you’re just realizing you need to, the path forward is the same. Same strategy. New context. Greater visibility. And—finally—recognition for the work that’s always mattered.

© 2025 Spin Sucks. All rights reserved. The PESO Model is a registered trademark of Spin Sucks.

Gini Dietrich

Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO, and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks (the book). She is the creator of the PESO Model© and has crafted a certification for it in collaboration with USC Annenberg. She has run and grown an agency for the past 19 years. She is co-author of Marketing in the Round, co-host of Inside PR, and co-host of The Agency Leadership podcast. She also holds "legend" status on Peloton.

View all posts by Gini Dietrich

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