Breaking through the AI Layer: Positioning Brands for the Internet’s Next Era

Photo by Philip Graves on Unsplash

The internet isn’t going back. In a short two and half years, the launch of ChatGPT quickly ushered in a new era of AI experiences and Generative AI produced content. We now have AI embedded into search experiences by both Google and Bing, attached as assistive entities to Meta products and others, and new LLM models being launched regularly by the growing field of AI companies. Not to mention the new class of not-quite-right imagery and video strewn across the internet. Whether we like it or not, if the current trajectory continues, AI is going to be a part of every online experience we have. 

This new reality is already starting to become visible. With an increasing amount of search queries outsourced to Google’s AI Overviews product, Meta launching (and subsequently retracting and refining) AI avatars, and AI-enabled features finding their way into all our products, we’re not staring at an uncanny valley ahead — we’re walking through it right now. 

It’s also unlikely this activity will be slowing down anytime soon. With political tailwinds aligned, the tech industry has taken an encouraging posture toward unencumbered AI maximalism. There is value in pushing the technology further, faster, and seeing exactly how much it can create and automate. The latest flavor of which is agentic AIs that have narrower focuses, but the ability to communicate and collaborate with one another to complete tasks. Some speculate this will ultimately manifest in personalized agents programmed to interact with content and select products based on unique user preferences. Perhaps, the internet itself may simply become a vessel for various AIs to crawl which could…completely upend the economic foundation of the internet and its traffic-based digital advertising model, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

For brands, understanding how to co-exist with, “market to”, and break through this new AI layer will be an ongoing challenge, but one they should strive to overcome in order to maintain a meaningful presence and role in consumer’s lives. While concerns around speed of development, experience quality, hallucinations and other ghosts in the machine persist, the more pressing matter for brands to confront is a new pernicious byproduct taking hold: the proliferation of low quality content across the internet also known as “AI Slop”.    

Fake blogs, user profiles, social presences and content of all types across the internet are cropping up often spearheaded by engagement hackers or click farming operations now supercharged with AI. At best this content could be viewed as generic nonsense to scroll past, but it’s also economically harmful - standing between real creators and brands and their audience’s valuable seconds of attention. In some instances, the content can even be malicious or unethical. Although efforts are being made to curb this type of content, it is difficult to slow down the multiplication effect occurring. In part, perhaps ironically, because the technology has made it so easy to continue creating it at lightspeed. 

In a world where brand content is now competing against giant publishers, influencers, algorithm bait, brain rot content, AI slop and whatever comes next (personal AI agent bribery?), the challenge of making your brand prominent, let alone visible, is enough to make marketers proverbially throw their phones in the ocean and stop trying. That would be a mistake. Not just because of the brand impact, but because in this new environment people, and even the AI systems themselves, deserve quality content.

Certainly, one strategy could be to embrace the slop ethos. Pump as much as you can out there to give yourself the best chance to capture attention, clicks, LLM agent crawlers, etc, but I doubt anyone truly believes that's a good path forward to build connection and presence. 

This is not to say brands shouldn’t use AI when crafting content, they most definitely should not turn a blind eye to process efficiencies or creative inspiration these tools can provide. But feverishly prompting and publishing is not a good choice.

Brands have a unique opportunity here to reclaim the recognized authorship and voice of higher quality and more useful content for consumers. If you’ve read this far, it’s time to talk about what brands can and should be doing to position themselves toward this future. While it is still early days, there are a few principles that those looking to stay on the front-foot of the coming disruption can bear in mind. 

First, let AI co-create, but not dominate your content development. It can bring new possibilities and shortcut processes, but the human element will continue to be necessary to help creative and copy diverge from the content homogeneity that is bound to propagate further. 

Next, as discussed earlier, don’t play the volume game. Instead play the quality one. Don’t focus on mass producing content just because we can, focus on making the best content with AI’s help. Using AIs and LLMs to hone in on research areas and insights will help brands focus on key areas, topics and ideas that actually matter to customers and align with their identity vs. flooding the zone with content that isn’t necessary. 

Another area to start strategizing around is ensuring visibility from a search perspective. As search continues to be one of the biggest touchpoints with the clearest intent signals brands have access to, it’s important for brands to stay ahead of the AI experiences and LLM apps changing the current paradigm. As it evolves with AI, brands should monitor and adapt content for LLMs and AI overview experiences to make sure their best pages and content are registering and surfacing. Additionally, they can start to align themselves with oft-cited publishers and evolve their partnership strategies to help maintain visibility around relevant topics. 

Finally, brands would be wise to consider the future of owned AI agents. As AI technology becomes more distributed, and continues being embedded in consumer experiences, many brands may want to develop and host their own agents on their properties. While history is littered with branded web, mobile, voice, and web3 apps that were ill-conceived, AI and LLM technology feels different. If and when that time comes, brands should ensure these experiences are designed with user research and tested to understand how they can be a helpful vs. hindering enhancement to their ecosystem.

Overall, a little consideration and care for content and experiences will go a long way. It always has. And It’s going to matter as we move further into an era of marketing to algorithms and AIs. They will want to see things of unique value that have an intangible quality of originality, or dare I say authenticity. They want to learn something new as much as we want to see something new. If we can pull out from under the weight of change, one can imagine that brands are in a surprisingly good position to provide content that displays these desirable signals: credibility, quality, relevance, commerce opportunities, and more. Let’s make sure we don’t get lost in the slop.