AI Research is Shaping IGP Decisions

New RepTrak data shows the Informed General Public is increasingly turning to AI tools for general productivity and research, but not for specific commercial decisions. Weekly usage is highest for news and topic research (37%), simplifying information (35%), and work tasks (33%). It drops to 26% for researching specific companies, 25% for comparing before buying, and 14% for travel planning.

For communications leaders building AI strategies, this data point matters: the tasks where AI adoption is strongest are also the tasks that most subtly influence reputation. 

Stakeholders experience AI as a neutral research tool, not as something shaping their commercial choices. But by the time they reach a decision, AI has already determined who they're deciding between. The influence from reputation isn't happening at the decision stage—it's happening in the research phase that precedes it, without stakeholder awareness that it's happening at all.

AI's highest influence is in the phase stakeholders don't recognize as influential

This dynamic is borne out in RepTrak data. Our 2026 Global RepTrak 100, which included AI as a discrete channel for the first time, reported that AI’s impact score already ranked 7th out of 14 channels (despite ranking 11th by reach). 

The GRT 100 identifies what drives that gap: where every other channel delivers content the IGP encounters passively or by habit, AI delivers answers to questions the IGP actively asked. The stakeholders AI reaches are asking specific questions about specific companies during their research phase. The influence lands without the skepticism that accompanies advertising or earned media, because the stakeholder initiated it.

As a comms leader, though, this is where relying on self-reported data can trip you up.

Because IGP respondents are stating they’re staying away from AI for “down-funnel” topics, it may appear that understanding what AI thinks of your company may not influence commercial decisions. But that would be wrong: Instead of explicitly asking AI to make a specific recommendation, IGP stakeholders are implicitly asking AI to filter the information they themselves use to make decisions.

Knowing how AI views your company—and what content it finds influential in shaping its view—is a key to beating that filter.

Measuring AI as a stakeholder is now where reputation management starts

The gap between what AI says about a company and what that company believes about itself is the new frontier of reputation risk. It's also, for the first time, measurable.

RepTrak's AI as a Stakeholder solution is built specifically for this problem. It applies the same rigorous framework RepTrak has used for over 20 years to measure how AI platforms perceive and represent a company, across every audience that matters: consumers, employees, investors, policymakers, business decision-makers, and media. 

Deploying RepTrak’s proven measurement model against AI creates a proactive dynamic to AI optimization. Comms leaders can do more than know what AI says about a company; they can also know why. 

For communications leaders, that information lets them act on the right things rather than optimizing the wrong ones.

The communications leaders who get ahead of this won't do it by managing AI as a channel. They'll do it by treating the research phase as reputation's new highest-stakes moment, and by building the visibility to understand what AI is saying about them before the next stakeholder asks.