CEOs must lead the narrative or be silenced by AI

I was a panelist at more than one CXO roundtable alongside the Cannes LIONS festival this year. We discussed messaging, brand risk, and the redefinition of news and views in the AI era. A clear takeaway was that CEOs need to take charge of PR and corporate reputation as core to business.

Influence has gone beyond the human sphere to being computational. In a world flooded with synthetic content, algorithmic filters, and AI-generated headlines, the question is no longer whether your story will be told, but whether it will be surfaced, summarized, supercharged or silenced by machines.

On paper, PR as an industry barely registers as a rounding off error in the global economy. But to dismiss it based on its size is to misunderstand its power.

PR doesn’t own platforms. It shapes perception. It doesn’t control algorithms. It informs the inputs that train them. It may not scale like tech, but it steers what people believe about companies, crises, leaders, and entire industries.

In the AI age, that influence is magnified. PR is increasingly embedded in the feedback loop of machines. Its narratives shape what language models surface, summarize, and reinforce.

The most valuable compound in this era is ‘fame with credibility’. PR is the machinery behind it. AI hasn’t killed PR. In fact, it has made it more valuable than ever. What was once a media outreach function is now a boardroom lever for trust, visibility, and long-term value.

We’re not witnessing PR’s decline. We’re watching its reinvention. I call it a RenAIssance because it resets how businesses influence, communicate, and lead in a machine-shaped world. AI makes storytelling easier for all. Startups, NGOs, and challenger brands can wield the same communication tools as corporations paying multimillion-dollar retainers. There is far more noise and misinformation.

PR can no longer be about gatekeeping. From the era of Edward Bernays to the era of ChatGPT, PR has evolved with every communication wave. The mission remains to earn trust, shape perception, and secure strategic relevance. For CEOs, it is a business-critical imperative, not just a media shift.

PR once managed public opinion. Now it also needs to influence machine perception. Press releases, leadership op-eds, and earned media don’t just sway human audiences , they train AI. Credible coverage feeds the large language models behind Google’s Search Generative Experience and ChatGPT. These tools don’t just surface links but ‘scrape and summarise’ from trusted sources.

This shift from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) means discoverability now depends on authority, not keywords. In this funnel, PR is the feed. Ignore it, and your brand vanishes from the machine conversation.

Marketing is stretched, stressed, and supercharged by AI. Campaigns go live in minutes. Messaging is automated. Targeting is machine-tuned. In this flood of machine-made content, authenticity is the buoy. PR brings the human voice back into the conversation. It needs to be trusted both by humans and machines.

Done well, PR sharpens a i CEO’s voice, strengthens stakeholder confidence, and enables long-term brand memory. In an attention-starved world, earned media, authentic storytelling, and editorial nuance are core assets, not optional extras. These stories get archived, cited, and resurface when it matters most.

AI enables real-time sentiment tracking, narrative forecasting, and algorithmic reputation modelling. It allows the discourse to be shaped proactively.

AI will automate drafting, data-crunching, and personalisation, but it’s still human insight that delivers meaning. The messaging tone, ethical judgment, and necessary media relationships become the true differentiators. This is where PR becomes strategy, not support. In an age of deepfakes and eroding trust, PR must reinforce what’s real.

CEOs, pay attention — AI won’t replace PR, but it will expose which organisations never took it seriously. If PR once seemed downstream of performance, today it’s upstream. The future of PR isn’t about faster press releases or clever headlines. It’s about creating a brand story that humans believe in and machines amplify.

Welcome to the RenAIssance.

Shubhranshu Singh is a marketer and columnist. He was honoured as one of the 50 most influential global CMOs for 2025 by Forbes and serves on the board of the Effie LIONS foundation. The views expressed are personal.