Prompt of the Week: The "AI Visibility Audit"

Hi Reader,

Last week I asked ChatGPT a simple question about a Fortune 500 client.

It got the answer half right.

The other half? It pulled from a Reddit thread, a 2019 trade article, and a competitor's blog post.

That's the new media reality. AI isn't just researching your brand — it's summarizing it. And the summary it gives doesn't care about your media list, your boilerplate, or last quarter's award win.

This week, Upspring rolled out an "AI Authority Audit" service for brands worried about exactly this. And at Axios' Communicators Live event on Tuesday, Reddit CCO Adam Collins reminded the room: "The technology is in service of the result you're trying to drive — the technology is not the result itself."

So here's the question: do you actually know what AI is saying about your brand right now? Most comms teams I talk to don't. That's the gap this week's prompt closes.

👇🏽 Here's the prompt:

Prompt of the Week

🎯 Expert Mode: The "AI Visibility Audit."

Scenario: You want to know how your brand, CEO, or product is being represented by AI search tools — and where the gaps, errors, and opportunities are. You can run this audit in 15 minutes and walk into your next leadership meeting with a real picture of your AI-search reality.

Instructions:

1️⃣ Pick your subject. Brand, CEO name, product line, or campaign. Be specific.

2️⃣ Open three tabs: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. You'll run the same questions in each. The contrast is the point.

3️⃣ Paste this prompt at the start of each session:

Act as a senior communications strategist. I'm going to ask you five questions about [BRAND/PERSON]. For each answer, do three things: (1) Give the answer you'd give a stranger asking. (2) List the sources or types of sources you're drawing from. (3) Flag anything you're uncertain about, contradictory across sources, or missing. Be direct — I'm using this to find gaps in our public footprint.

4️⃣ Ask these five questions in order:

What does [BRAND] do?

What is [BRAND] best known for?

Who are [BRAND]'s top competitors and how do they compare?

What's the latest news about [BRAND]?

What are common criticisms or concerns about [BRAND]?

5️⃣ Compare and act. Note four things across the three tools: outdated info, missing wins, weak sources, and moments where competitors got cited but you didn't. Turn it into a one-page action list — the stories, statements, third-party validators, or earned placements you need to publish to close the gaps.

Suggested Tool: Run it on all three — ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The disagreements between them are where the real insight lives.

Why You'll Love It

It's measurable. You'll have concrete gaps to brief into your earned media plan within an hour.
It works at any altitude. Run it for the brand, the CEO, a new product launch, or a single B2B account.
It exposes the lazy citations. When AI quotes your competitor instead of you, that's not a mystery — that's a content brief.

This is the audit your CEO is going to ask for in Q3. Run it now and you'll already have the answers — and the action plan.

Talk soon,

Chris

Here are a few articles from the past week to help keep you up to speed:

Google I/O 2026: How the AI search update changes SEO and brand visibility
Launchcodex / Google Blog May 19, 2026 Google's biggest I/O announcement for PR pros: AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, and brands cited inside AI answers earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than non-cited competitors on the same query. For communicators, the metric is shifting — it's no longer about ranking, it's about being named.
AI backlash becomes a real business risk
Axios May 17, 2026 New polling shows consumer excitement about AI has dropped from 50% to 19% in just two years — and 54% of Americans say they're experiencing AI fatigue. For brand communicators, this is a strategic warning: how you talk about AI is now a reputational variable, and audiences are increasingly punishing companies that feel AI-heavy or tone-deaf.
How AI Has Changed the Rules for Content Creation
O'Dwyer's PR News May 15, 2026 Content is no longer scarce — credibility is. This sharp piece argues that AI floods channels with volume while real scarcity shifts to verifiable, consistently sourced, human-edited information. The communications teams that win will be those applying editorial judgment, not just output speed.
The State of AI Regulation for Brands: May 2026
EPR / PR News May 2026 A national brand campaign now crosses at least five different state AI compliance regimes. This deep-dive maps the patchwork — including New York's synthetic performer disclosure rules effective June 2026 and the EU AI Act's accelerated disclosure deadline of December 2, 2026. The strategic case: build to the strictest standard now, and roll it down.
2026 Report: Confidence Gap Hinders AI in Communications
Tech Intel Pro May 2026 Communicators rate AI as urgent (7.4/10) and valuable (8.1/10) — but their confidence in actually using it effectively lands at just 4.2/10. Access to tools isn't the bottleneck. Belief is. Worth sharing with your CMO when making the case for dedicated AI practice time.