It’s incredibly amazing how artificial intelligence (AI) has become such a game-changer in business. Think of ChatGPT creating articles and DALL-E generating images for you. Consider machine learning (ML), helping you make business forecasts and decisions, all while ensuring brand safety.
💡 Read Brand Reputation 101: Monitoring, Analysis, and Management Tools
On the flip side, AI could pose some potential risks. The technology could pave the way for biases and discriminations, privacy and security issues, as well as misinformation and deepfakes.
Here’s the catch question: Is your brand safe from the risk of AI?
This page tackles brand safety in the age of artificial intelligence. Learn why this is extremely important and how to protect your brand amid the risk involved. Read on.
Understanding Artificial Intelligence and Brand Safety
In a nutshell, artificial intelligence impacts brand safety in many ways. But first things first, let’s define these two concepts:
- Artificial intelligence: AI incorporates intelligence into computer systems, allowing digital tools to think and work like humans. This includes natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation (RPA).
Statista predicted its global market to grow from $305.90 billion in 2024 to $738.80 billion by 2030 at a 15.83% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
- Brand safety: This concept focuses on protecting your brand image from physical and cyber threats, such as AI-related risks. It involves effective strategies to ensure your content and ads aren’t connected to harmful and inappropriate tools and sites.
Some robust measures include content integrity, ad placement control, and risk management. About 60% of advertisers and agencies regard brand safety as their top concern.
It’s crucial to understand how AI technology and brand safety are intertwined. AI can benefit your business in a handful of ways. However, its potential risks could compromise your brand. Therefore, promoting brand safety is vital to business success.
Learn the importance of promoting brand safety amid the rise of AI in the next section.
Why Brand Safety Is Important in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence has disrupted various industries in today’s business landscape. Deloitte considers this era the “Age of With,” meaning human work is “augmented and enhanced with AI.” Nearly 95% of business leaders say AI is vital to organizational success.
On the other side of the spectrum, AI has potential downsides. This technology can ruin your brand image and reputation. In fact, Emarketer cites that brand safety is at risk this year due to the following:
- A rise in ad spending on risky digital channels
- More advanced AI tools
- Polarizing political talk
- Social platforms with weak content moderation
- Cases of ad fraud on connected TV (CTV)
That said, safeguarding your brand from AI risks is imperative. Here’s why brand safety is important in the age of AI:
1. To protect business reputation
Brand reputation is everything in today’s digital landscape. Your brand should have a positive connotation when the general public hears it. More importantly, it should resonate well with your target market.
Adam Tishman, Co-Founder at Helix Sleep, underscores the importance of brand safety for a good business reputation.
Their brand name itself already rings a bell about its commitment to promoting better sleep through quality mattresses. They only publish credible reviews from reliable sources—not AI-generated content. See below:
Tishman says, “We don’t want to be associated with AI-powered fraud and misinformation. Likewise, we’re careful when generating AI-assisted content for our sales and marketing. Ultimately, we want to protect our brand as a promoter of sound sleep.”
2. To build consumer trust
A brand communicates with consumers. It sends a strong message, either as a robust solution to customer needs or a trickster that deceives its target market. Hence, it can make or break consumer trust.
Here’s the thing: AI technology can either help or harm your brand in establishing consumer trust.
AI-powered tools can improve customer service and provide self-support portals to empower customers. Meanwhile, this technology could generate false and misleading information, making customers lose their trust and confidence in your brand.
IAS conducted research on the state of brand safety: About three-quarters of consumers (75%) don’t favor brands advertising on websites that spread misinformation. Neither do they support businesses that create AI-generated content without researching, fact-checking, editing, and proofreading it.
3. To gain customer support
It’s easy to see consumers support certain brands due to their long-term reputation and credibility. They continue to buy their products or hire their services even without thinking twice. Meanwhile, brands associated with negative entities or issues instantly shoo customers away.
The same IAS report states: 82% of consumers ensure that the content surrounding online ads is appropriate. Over 50% will stop using products or services of brands whose ads appear near inappropriate content.
Volodymyr Shchegel, VP of Engineering at MacKeeper, argues that “AI can taint your brand by using tools to publish low-quality content and misleading information. It can even go as far as discouraging consumers from supporting your brand.”
4. To increase business profitability
The brand itself makes money for your business. A good reputation translates to an increase in the bottom line. Conversely, one negative remark about your brand will make you lose profits and even lead to a shutdown. That’s why boosting brand consideration is crucial.
Here’s the problem: While AI aids companies in improving various business functions, the technology can instantly ruin their brand reputation. One wrong move, and it can cost your business and overall profits.
Albert Kim, VP of Talent at Checkr, recommends using AI to enhance brands and optimize processes. He also suggests using sales and marketing automation to promote products or services and AI-integrated analytics tools for data analysis and business reporting.
However, Kim argues, “AI isn’t the ultimate panacea for all business problems. As the technology isn’t perfect, it can be subject to data inaccuracy and fraudulent activities. Therefore, it takes human discernment, creativity, and wise leverage to maximize its potential for business profits.”
5. To avoid legal and financial implications
It’s crucial to protect your brand at all costs. This holistic representation of your business connects with your stakeholders—especially customers.
If your brand sends a negative message, it could automatically lose their trust and confidence. The worst thing that could happen is if you would have to face legal ramifications and financial consequences. For all you know, AI could be the culprit.
Take Air Canada as a perfect example: It recently made the headlines of most media outlets due to its AI-powered chatbot providing incorrect information.
In February 2024, Air Canada had to pay a passenger, Jake Moffatt, after its chatbot gave him wrong information about bereavement fares. He bought tickets based on what the chatbot said. When he tried to get a refund, the airline rejected it. A tribunal ruled Air Canada was at fault for not ensuring the chatbot gave accurate data.
How To Protect Your Brand Amidst AI
Understanding the importance of brand safety is one thing; Safeguarding your brand from AI risk is another.
That said, here are some best practices to consider:
- Establish solid branding. Your brand is more than your business name, employer identification number(EIN), and other key information. It also represents your brand principles and core values as a business. Strengthen your PR and brand campaigns, whether through content pieces or engagement levels.
- Educate your whole team. It’s imperative to orient your employees on brand safety. Likewise, train them on securing content and systems from the risk of AI. Ultimately, it takes a collaborative effort from all stakeholders involved!
- Track your brand content. You might employ brand storytelling as part of your PR campaigns. However, make sure to monitor your published messages. Either these content pieces are AI-generated or associated with AI risk.
- Respond to potential threats. Tracking your brand content lets you identify AI risks like algorithm biases, fake news, and cyberattacks (phishing, malware attacks, etc.). What better way to protect your brand from these threats than to take action in real-time?
- Work with trusted AI partners. Harnessing AI power is imperative in today’s business landscape. In fact, 80% of leaders use this technology for various strategies and decisions. However, partner only with highly reputable AI vendors to minimize the risk.
- Audit AI tools and systems. You might be using AI tools for PR and branding, among other business processes. Review and examine these technologies to ensure you’re generating valuable content. Doing so will also help avoid risks like bias and misinformation.
- Ensure legal compliance. While the rules governing AI have yet to be established, you should strictly follow laws and regulations for business processes like branding. Think of intellectual property rights, data privacy, and cybersecurity, among others. Ultimately, full adherence prevents legal and financial implications.
- Set a crisis plan in place. Employ effective crisis management strategies designed to handle difficult situations that can compromise your brand reputation. Should your branding get involved in AI risk, know what to do and how to proceed.
Final Words
Companies can no longer ignore the impact of AI in today’s business landscape. They should protect themselves from the risks of this technology and make brand safety a top priority. As cited above, brand safety is vital for:
- Safeguarding business reputation;
- Establishing consumer trust;
- Earning customer support;
- Augmenting business profits; and,
- Preventing legal ramifications.
Consider the best practices recommended above for protecting your brand. And you can promote business growth and success!
