Jonathan Ernst on Staying Credible in the Age of AI Search

Right now, the person writing about your industry at 2 a.m. on Reddit may be more visible in AI search results than your brand.

Jonathan Ernst, Deputy Director of Strategic and Digital Communications at Bayer, is a storyteller at heart and an architect of brand authority by experience. Over 14 years, he’s navigated the evolution of digital connection from the rise of social media to the current frontier of AI—building the bridge between traditional narrative and emerging technology.

In this episode, Jonathan joins Kristen to unpack how to stay visible and credible when AI decides what your audience sees and why your website has become your most important communications tool.

Watch or Listen to the Episode

Watch the full episode here or listen to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

The Big Idea: If You're Not Visible, You're Not Credible

Generative search has changed the rules of communication. When people ask ChatGPT or Gemini a question, they no longer get a list of links to click through—they get a single synthesized answer, one that may not reference any brand at all. Jonathan argues that if your brand isn’t part of the information those tools draw from, you’ve effectively vanished from the conversation. For a science-based company operating in a heavily regulated industry, that’s a credibility and reputation problem with real business consequences.

The danger is amplified by how confidently AI repeats whatever it finds. An anonymous, authoritative-sounding post on Reddit can get scraped and served up as fact, while the actual experts stay locked behind paywalls, writing in language built for their peers rather than the public.

According to Jonathan, the onus is on organizations to put credible, accessible, up-to-date information where the machines can read it—specifically, on their website. He believes a website is the single most important tool a company has in the era of AI—a living, factual resource that answers real questions directly, stays fresh, and is accessible to both humans and LLMs.

"If it's not on your website, it doesn't exist. It really doesn't exist. That's just how it is now."

Jonathan Ernst

- Deputy Director of Strategic and Digital Communications at Bayer

Key Takeaways

More and more people are turning to generative search for answers, which means brands need to think about visibility in a new way. If AI tools synthesize an answer without drawing on your content, your expertise never enters the conversation—and the trust and reputation you’ve spent years building doesn’t get a chance to work for you.

People tend to believe the first response they see. It takes two additional reference points to undo what they learned from the first one.

Your website deserves renewed attention as a communications tool. It’s worth considering how LLMs scan and interpret your pages: clear, factual content that directly addresses real questions is easier for these tools to draw from than content written only with human browsing in mind. Recency matters, too—when up-to-date information isn’t available, AI tools may surface older content as if it were current, which can undermine the accuracy of what audiences learn about you.

Design choices that work well for human visitors—like tucking details into accordions, dropdowns, or interactive elements—can render key information invisible to LLMs. Auditing how your most important information is structured and presented helps ensure it’s accessible to both human readers and the AI tools summarizing on their behalf.

Ways to Connect with Jonathan

If you’d like to connect with Jonathan, you can do so here:

Jonathan’s LinkedIn

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