AI Is Eroding Online Trust. What Does That Mean for Your Reputation?

There was a time when a video of a dog rescuing a kitten, a bear wandering into someone's backyard, or a remarkably clever raccoon could simply make us smile. We watched it, maybe shared it, and moved on with our day. Now, somewhere between the first few seconds and the share button, another thought has begun creeping into the experience: Is that real?

It seems like an awfully consequential question to emerge from something as inconsequential as a cute animal video. But perhaps that is precisely why we should pay attention. In July, BBC Future explored how artificial intelligence is changing our relationship with one of the internet's most innocent forms of entertainment: animal videos. Increasingly sophisticated AI-generated videos mean that the unbelievable thing we are watching may, quite literally, be unbelievable. The larger concern is not whether a particular kitten actually performed the remarkable feat on our screen. It is what happens after enough of us become accustomed to questioning everything we see.

Skepticism does not disappear when we scroll to the next post.

AI and Online Trust Are Becoming a Reputation Management Issue

For years, we were taught that seeing is believing. Photographs offered evidence. Video provided confirmation. Audio allowed us to hear someone's words for ourselves. Those assumptions are becoming considerably more complicated as synthetic media become easier to create and increasingly difficult for the average person to identify with confidence.

Research suggests the danger may not simply be that people believe something false. In a 2020 study published in Social Media + Society, communication researchers Cristian Vaccari and Andrew Chadwick tested responses to deepfake videos using a representative sample of 2,005 people in the United Kingdom. They found that people were more likely to feel uncertain than to be misled by deepfakes, and that resulting uncertainty reduced trust in news on social media. In other words, the damage was not limited to whether people believed something that was false. The presence of convincing synthetic content also made it harder to feel certain about what was true.

More recent research suggests that the problem may extend beyond an individual piece of content. A 2026 systematic review published in Frontiers in Political Science examined 74 empirical studies on synthetic media, political disinformation, and public trust published between 2018 and 2025. The researchers describe a "skepticism tax," an additional cognitive burden created by knowing that seemingly authentic content could be synthetic. Their review found that synthetic media primarily creates uncertainty rather than universally persuading people to believe false information.

That distinction matters enormously for organizations. The reputational challenge of artificial intelligence is not confined to someone creating a fake video of your CEO or impersonating an executive's voice, although organizations should certainly prepare for those possibilities. The deeper challenge is communicating with stakeholders who are becoming conditioned to question whether what they see and hear is authentic in the first place.

When everything can be manufactured, credibility becomes more valuable.

The Cute Animal Problem Is Really a Trust Problem

The BBC story caught my attention because of how ordinary the example was. We are not talking about national security, financial fraud, or a sophisticated corporate misinformation campaign. We are talking about cute animals, something so benign that most of us would never have imagined needing to authenticate it. Yet even there, suspicion has entered the experience.

I found another online conversation about the phenomenon equally interesting. One commenter suggested that perhaps people would eventually begin moving back toward physical media: film, Polaroids, records, discs, and other things that feel tangible. That stopped me because, in some ways, we are already watching it happen.

As someone who studies multigenerational communication, I am fascinated by the renewed interest younger generations have shown in older forms of technology. My niece wanted an old-school digital camera to document her prom. My son collects and plays records and CDs. Polaroid cameras appear on girls' weekends and at events where nearly everyone already has a considerably more sophisticated camera sitting in a pocket or purse. Certainly nostalgia and aesthetics are part of the appeal, but I find myself wondering whether something deeper is happening too.

There is something reassuring about holding the photograph, playing the record, owning the physical object, or knowing that a moment existed somewhere other than an endlessly editable screen. I would not suggest that this cultural return to physical media can be explained by trust alone. But it raises an interesting question for those of us who study communication and perception: as the digital world becomes easier to manipulate, will people place greater value on experiences and evidence that feel tangible, identifiable, and unquestionably real?

Organizations should pay attention to that instinct because the same desire for recognizable authenticity shapes how people evaluate businesses, institutions, and leaders.

Online Trust Begins Before Anyone Talks to Your Organization

The first conversation someone has with an organization often happens long before anyone actually speaks. A potential customer searches the organization. A prospective employee reads reviews. A journalist examines the website and social channels. A community member encounters a video. An AI search tool summarizes the organization. A prospective partner looks at leadership profiles. Piece by piece, an impression begins forming.

By the time someone sends an email, schedules a consultation, walks through the door, or picks up the phone, a preliminary judgment may already exist. That makes digital credibility part of reputation management, not simply marketing.

Dr. Katherine Spradley, CEO of K. Cradley & Company, an international marketing firm, regularly educates organizations about the importance of establishing trust before a prospective customer ever reaches the point of conversation. Her perspective is particularly relevant here because the question of trust begins much earlier than many organizations realize. If people are forming impressions before they ever interact directly with an organization, what evidence are we giving them that we are credible?

"Trust does not begin when someone finally calls your business or sits across the table from you. It begins while they are deciding whether you are credible enough to contact in the first place. In an online environment where people increasingly have to question what is real, organizations have to create consistent signals of credibility long before that first conversation ever happens." Dr. Katherine Spradley

In an online environment where audiences increasingly have to determine what is real, those early credibility signals become even more important. An organization is not merely trying to attract someone's attention. It is asking that person to believe that what they are seeing accurately represents who the organization is, what it does, and how it will behave.

Organizations are no longer simply competing for attention. They are competing for belief.

Your Organization Needs Recognizable Sources of Truth

This is where online trust becomes a crisis preparedness issue. Imagine that a video involving your organization begins circulating tomorrow. Perhaps it is authentic. Perhaps it has been selectively edited. Perhaps important context is missing. Perhaps it is completely fabricated.

Before deciding what statement to issue, leaders should be asking:

• Where will stakeholders go to determine what is true?

• Will they recognize your website as an authoritative source?

• Will employees know where verified information will be published?

• Will journalists know whom to contact?

• Will customers recognize your official social channels?

• Will executives communicate consistently enough that stakeholders can recognize authentic leadership communication?

• Will your communications team have a verification process before responding to questionable content?

• Most importantly, have you established those expectations before you need people to rely on them?

During a crisis, organizations frequently concentrate on what statement they should release. In an environment shaped by synthetic media, crisis communication planning must also consider how audiences will verify that the statement, image, audio, or video actually came from the organization. Researchers with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public have explored how media provenance information can affect people's perceptions of trust and accuracy. Their experiments found that showing people information about the source and history of media helped participants better identify manipulated content as less trustworthy and improved assessments of authentic content when the provenance information itself was verified.

The researchers also offer an important caution: provenance should support critical thinking rather than replace it. For organizations, the lesson is not that a technological verification tool will solve the trust problem. It is that helping people identify where information originated, and giving them recognizable places to verify it, will become increasingly important.

That requires something stronger than simply maintaining active social media accounts. It requires an established information ecosystem in which stakeholders already know where credible information lives.

Crisis Preparedness in an Era of AI and Online Trust

Organizations cannot eliminate synthetic media, but they can strengthen the conditions under which stakeholders evaluate information about them. A modern crisis communication plan should identify official communication channels and make those channels familiar to stakeholders before an emergency occurs. Organizations should establish clear approval and verification protocols, maintain consistent executive and organizational identities online, and use media monitoring and social listening to identify emerging conversations and misinformation before those narratives gain momentum. Crisis preparedness should also consider executive impersonation, manipulated content, verification procedures, and how leaders will respond when authenticity itself becomes part of the story.

This is also where consistency becomes extraordinarily valuable. When an organization has communicated clearly for years, maintained recognizable channels, demonstrated transparency, developed trusted relationships with journalists and stakeholders, and consistently aligned its behavior with its messaging, it has accumulated something that cannot be generated instantly during a crisis...credibility.

That credibility becomes a form of reputational protection. It does not guarantee that every stakeholder will believe an organization during a crisis, nor does it eliminate misinformation. What it does is give audiences an established body of experience against which new information can be evaluated. When the information environment becomes less certain, that history matters.

Trust Architecture Matters More When People Question What Is Real

Last month, I wrote about Trust Architecture, the interconnected system of leadership behavior, communication practices, organizational culture, decisions, and stakeholder experiences through which trust is built. Artificial intelligence adds another reason organizations need to think about trust structurally rather than transactionally.

We can no longer assume that publishing accurate information automatically makes that information believable. The audience brings something to the exchange too: previous experiences, existing perceptions, skepticism, expectations, and increasingly, questions about authenticity. That means reputation management cannot begin when misinformation appears. It begins with what people already know about you, whether your executives are recognizable and credible, whether your digital presence is consistent, and whether your actions repeatedly confirm what your communication says.

It also begins with relationships. Employees, customers, journalists, community members, partners, board members, public officials, and other stakeholders accumulate experiences with an organization over time. Every interaction contributes another piece of evidence about whether its communication can be trusted. That reservoir of experience matters considerably when people are later asked to decide between competing versions of events.

Trust, in other words, is not something an organization gets to declare when it needs it. It is something other people decide has been earned.

What Should Organizations Do About AI and Online Trust Now?

The answer is not to become afraid of artificial intelligence or retreat from digital communication. AI offers significant opportunities for organizations, communicators, researchers, and creators. The more productive response is to recognize that the environment around trust has changed and adjust crisis preparedness and reputation management accordingly.

Leaders should begin asking where stakeholders would go first if they needed to verify information about the organization and whether those official communication channels are recognizable and current. They should consider whether executives communicate consistently enough that audiences understand what authentic leadership communication looks and sounds like. Crisis communication plans should account for synthetic and manipulated media, while media monitoring should include attention to impersonation, misinformation, and changing public perception.

Organizations should also examine the relationships they are establishing before a crisis. If someone encountered two conflicting versions of a story about your organization tomorrow, what reason have you already given that person to believe you? That question belongs in crisis preparedness, reputation management, executive communications, media training, and strategic communications conversations now, rather than after the fake video appears.

Reputation Is Built Before Reality Is Questioned

There is something almost absurd about tracing a conversation about organizational reputation back to videos of cats, dogs, bears, and raccoons. Except the internet has always had a peculiar way of revealing where communication is headed next. Cute animal videos once asked almost nothing of us except a few seconds of attention and perhaps a smile. Now even those moments can require a credibility assessment.

Did that actually happen?

If audiences are learning to ask that question about something so harmless, organizations should assume they will ask it when the stakes are considerably higher. The challenge ahead will not simply be proving what is false. It will be establishing, long before uncertainty arrives, why people should trust what comes from you.

That is why reputation management and crisis preparedness cannot begin with the crisis. Trust is accumulated through leadership behavior, communication, transparency, stakeholder relationships, organizational decisions, and consistent experiences long before an organization needs to call upon it.

PRiSM PR FIRM helps organizations strengthen crisis preparedness, executive communication, reputation management, and the systems that protect public trust before they are tested. Because when uncertainty arrives, organizations should not be introducing themselves as a trusted source for the first time. They should already be one.

Poised. Polished. Prepared.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is AI affecting online trust?

AI-generated images, audio, video, and other synthetic media make it increasingly difficult for audiences to determine whether digital content is authentic. Research on synthetic media suggests that the concern extends beyond believing false information. Exposure to convincing synthetic content can also create uncertainty about what is true, which may affect broader trust in information encountered online.

Why does online trust matter for reputation management?

People frequently encounter an organization online before interacting with it directly. Websites, search results, reviews, social media, news coverage, executive profiles, and AI-generated summaries can all influence public perception. Organizations therefore need consistent and credible digital signals that reinforce trust before direct interaction occurs.

Should a crisis communication plan address AI-generated content?

Yes. Organizations should consider how they would respond to manipulated images, synthetic video, cloned audio, executive impersonation, and other forms of misleading digital content. A crisis communication plan should identify verification procedures, official information channels, approval processes, spokesperson responsibilities, and monitoring protocols.

What can organizations do to protect trust before a crisis?

Organizations can strengthen trust through consistent leadership communication, recognizable official channels, stakeholder relationships, media monitoring, crisis preparedness, executive training, transparent communication, and alignment between organizational behavior and public messaging.