What’s This All About?

More and more people are using AI tools to compare products, research brands, and make decisions.

But unlike search engines — which serve links, rankings, and snippets — AI tools generate answers by blending patterns, knowledge, and context into a single narrative response. That means the way AI interprets your brand may look very different from what you’d expect to see in search results.

Your Challenge

Pick a brand you know well — your company, a product you work on, or just a favorite brand of yours.

Using your AI chat tool, ask a set of “brand perception” prompts such as:

What do you think of this brand/product?
What are its pros and cons?
What reviews can you find?
Who are its competitors?
Create a comparison table.
Where’s the best place to learn more?

Then turn your findings into a 1-page AI Perception Snapshot, capturing:

How AI describes the brand
Pros, cons, and competitor comparisons
Anything surprising or inconsistent in the answers
What this might mean for real consumers who search in AI tools

Extra Credit

Ask two different AI platforms (or ask the same platform multiple times!) and compare how your brand changes from result to result.

Hints

Start simple: ask your AI tool to summarize its own answer so you don’t have to sift through long text.
Try prompting: “Rewrite this as a clean comparison table” or “Highlight the three insights that matter most.”
Don’t worry about “right” answers — you’re exploring how AI currently sees things, not testing accuracy.

Now What?

As AI-powered search becomes a primary discovery channel, the narrative that AI constructs about your brand IS your brand for a growing segment of consumers. The gaps, inconsistencies, or competitor framings you surfaced represent a channel that most brands aren't equipped to monitor (yet).

Consider sharing your snapshot with your team as a conversation starter: Here's how AI sees us today—and here's where we might have work to do.

*From there, consider:
*

Setting up monthly AI brand monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude—track how your narrative shifts and which competitors keep appearing alongside you. You can even build an agent to do this for you!
Auditing your citation sources: Ask AI where its answers come from, then prioritize getting better coverage in those places (reviews, Wikipedia, industry publications, your own content).
Creating "prompt-first" content: Build FAQ pages, comparison guides, and use-case libraries that directly answer the questions people ask AI tools, written in natural conversation language. AI tools LOVE this kind of content.
Running the same exercise for top competitors—identify where they're positioned stronger and work on making up ground.
Briefing other teams: Make "AI perception" part of your content strategy, sales enablement, and product launch processes—this is a channel that needs active management now!

How to Submit

Email your 1-page AI Perception Snapshot to [email protected] with the subject line: [Mini Mission #1] [Your Name]

Body: A screenshot, doc, or slide — any format is fine.

What Happens Next

At the end-of-month AI Edge Live Session, we’ll showcase top submissions, announce awards, and update the leaderboard!