Originally published: November 2, 2012 | Updated: 2026
In 2012, a ZDNet op-ed argued that public relations professionals had no business creating content. That argument was wrong then. It's even harder to defend now.
Back then, the point was simple: there was no filter anymore. Brands that didn't create their own content were increasingly invisible.
The proof came in May 2011, when news of Osama bin Laden's death first broke not through a newsroom, but through a tweet. The lesson was immediate: information no longer needed traditional gatekeepers to reach the public.
Everyone with a smartphone was already in media. Mommy bloggers were deciding which brands got a time-out. A bar patron's phone video ended John Galliano's career at Dior. Civilians filming in the streets of the Middle East were shaping how revolutions were covered. PR professionals had no choice but to tweet, produce video, build trends — or cede the narrative to people who had no stake in getting it right.
That was 2012. Here's 2026: more than a third of consumers now begin product research with AI, not Google. The question is no longer whether PR will create content. It's whether that content earns a citation inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
The filter didn't come back. It evolved.
The buyer still starts with a question. But increasingly the answer arrives pre-packaged — synthesized, authoritative-sounding, and drawn from a narrow set of sources. If your brand isn't among them, it becomes harder to find, harder to compare, and easier to overlook.
AI Communications — the discipline of becoming the answer inside the AI engines — is what PR looks like now. It combines earned media, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI visibility research. It measures Citation Share: how often your brand appears in the answers AI engines produce when buyers ask the questions that matter.
PR will keep creating content. It always was going to.
But now that content has to work twice: for people reading it directly, and for the AI systems increasingly deciding what gets surfaced, cited, and summarized first.
Ronn Torossian is shaping AI — and the answers inside the chatbox.
He is the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release — the practitioner's guide to modern public relations strategy. He has been an industry leader for decades. Now he's building the AI Communications era.
Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, launched in 2003 — the AI Communications Firm, combining public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI-visibility research for B2C and B2B clients across beauty, technology, entertainment, corporate reputation, and crisis communications. An Inc. 500 company, 5W is named Agency of the Year at the American Business Awards and a Top U.S. PR Agency by O'Dwyer's.
Allu Arjun scored 54 in the Bollywood AI Visibility Index — #17 of 30. By box office he is one of the three most commercially successful Indian stars of the last five years. The gap is the story.
Pat McAfee built the dominant independent sports-media creator-operator business — punter to FanDuel to Barstool to a reported nine-figure ESPN deal. The template for talent-owned sports media.
Four entities. Nvidia owns the data-center layer. AMD is the credible second-source. Intel is the recovery-arc operator. Apple Silicon owns on-device. Two parallel citation surfaces, by design. Phase 0 framework + Q2 2026 landscape.
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