The search landscape hasn’t just shifted; it’s unrecognisable. As B2B tech brands adapt to the Answer Engine era, a dangerous trend has emerged; the mass over-reliance on Generative AI churning out sloppy marketing materials. 

Using AI to produce the majority of your owned media is seductive. Too often this is a volume, not a value play. We call this accumulation of low-value content and destruction of differentiation, Creative Debt. 

Mindlessly automating your content submerges your brand in a sea of sameness. If AI creates all of your content, your brand identity and authenticity are out of your control. Your all-important ‘Owned Content’ isn’t actually owned by you at all. Over time, a shortcut becomes a massive cost to your brand’s performance.

AI hates AI Slop

Cutting corners and accumulating Creative Debt harms your AI Visibility because low creativity equals low engagement with repetitive content, which LLMs pick up as a signal. So reduced engagement equals low visibility against your competitors. 

Why does AI value authentic content created by real people over AI slop? Because human engagement is a primary signal of trust and authority. If your content lacks the design thinking and original perspective required to capture the imagination of attention-deprived humans, the dispassionate algorithms of LLMs will simply look elsewhere for their answers. 

Earned Content up by a fifth

Our latest AI Optimisation Index data shows massive disruptions in Share of Visibility in LLM citations. In just one month, Earned Content, in editorial publications, skyrocketed by 19.1% and Owned content grew 7.8%. 

The signal is clear: high-quality owned editorial platforms with third-party validation are now the absolute bedrocks of AI visibility. In fact, leading industry analyst, Gartner, recommends a 100% increase in PR and Earned media spend.

Burying your brand in Creative Debt, trades a short-term gain for longer term decline. Competitors actively investing in these high-value, human-led creative teams will become more and more differentiated in the ‘eyes’ of LLMs and therefore be recommended more to actual humans. 

Where human creativity matters most

By fiercely protecting your creative freedom and investing in design thinking, you trigger the engagement that algorithms trust. Don’t stack up creative debt by cutting creative corners.

The solution is not to abandon all the time-saving advantages of AI, but to rethink how to deploy it when and where creativity matters most. Let AI handle the mechanics,  such as content adaptation, posting and measurement. Let your human experts craft the magic. 

To truly maximise AI visibility with LLMs, prioritise the human-led creative process and reach the human buyers you care most about.