Doing business in the age of AI is like playing in a minefield.
If you don’t take the right steps, you may find yourself in a world of hurt. Or gone completely.
You may be forced into a battle in which your AI must grapple with the AI of other entities.
Given the race to AI, you’ll need to automate to stay competitive while also “keeping it real.”
And it certainly won’t hurt if you’re located in a place with a strong AI talent ecosystem.
I discussed all of the above in my recent conversation with Julia Walker, who spoke with me and other public relations leaders for PRWeek’s 2026 Technology Trends Agency Business Report.
Improving Your Standing (or Coming Back From the Dead)
Businesses and consumers recently began trusting ChatGPT and other AI engines to source potential vendors. That set off a scramble by B2B and B2C companies, which are now scurrying to figure out how to improve their standing in the generative engine optimization (GEO) game.
But for some businesses it’s about more than improving their standing, it’s a fight for their lives.
One client came to us, and we discovered that ChatGPT and the other AI engines were saying the company was dead. As a result, the company was losing out on important business deals.
We helped them change the narrative. That’s what led us to build Bospar’s Audit*E.
After we discovered that the AI engines wouldn’t accept that the client was alive based on the company’s website marketing materials alone, we worked to secure journalist news stories.
We understood that after seeing news stories about this company being alive, AI tools might visit the client’s website. So we collaborated with the client to make its website AI-friendly. That included publishing an FAQ page, ensuring consistency throughout and added AI-facing schema.
Once the AI engines saw the media stories highlighting that the company was very much alive and open for business, and checked the company’s website, the responses that ChatGPT and the other popular AI tools that people use to identify vendors and products reflected that.
The Next Frontier: AI Battling AI
When Julia asked for my prognostication about the next big thing in tech, I responded: AI vs. AI.
Consider cybersecurity, for example.
I just attended a security gathering at which we discussed how malware will increasingly be fueled by AI, but how companies with proper resources will create countermeasures with AI.
AI-vs.-AI faceoffs will come to public relations and marketing as well. We could see such battles in terms of how we handle incident response, and tracking and monitoring, for example.
Why Authenticity Wins in an AI-Saturated World
But while everybody and their brother is rushing to understand, embrace and optimize for AI, the more human and authentic your brand and people come across, the better off you’ll be.
I was recently a guest on Jeff Wilser’s podcast, AI-Curious. Both of us have been pitched by AI for our various properties. We even dug into the typical formats of AI-written pitches.
Then Jeff predicted he would soon receive an AI pitch along these lines: “Hey, Jeff, I saw that hard-hitting conversation with you and Curtis. If you thought Curtis was a great guest, you’ll love this person.” Within 10 days, he received such a pitch, knowing someone used AI to write the pitch because it followed a very predictable format, and no human being would write like that.
Why the Bay Area Still Dominates AI
I’m a long-time San Francisco resident, and I love it here. Understanding where I’m coming from, Julia asked whether the Bay Area is still the hub of tech, and now AI, activity.
My answer? There’s no question that San Francisco and the Bay Area are where it’s at.
The reason? The concentration of talent, which is getting smart from each other and strengthening the ecosystem. When it comes to AI, the San Francisco area ecosystem is many magnitudes greater than anything else that exists elsewhere in California, the U.S. or beyond.
Is there interest in AI elsewhere? Absolutely. But no other area has the same density, quality and quantity of AI talent and activity. I’ll give a small example as a proof point.
NVIDIA’s GTC 2026 recently took place in San Jose. I was having dinner at about 6:30 p.m. with VentureBeat journalist Michael Nunez. Because of the Super Bowl-level traffic from the huge AI trade show, Michael and I didn’t get back to San Francisco until about 10:30 that night.
The strong Bay Area real estate market is also due to the onslaught of AI companies here.
While I’m proud of the Bay Area, it’ll be important for AI to federate to other cities because AI is still a human endeavor. Having other points of view will increase AI’s utility and benefit for all.
