Fixing the AI industry’s PR problem

 Financial Times UK 3 Sep 2026 Robert Arm strong robert.arm strong@ft.com 

The pub lic repu ta tion of the big AI com pan ies is an abso lute dump ster fire. Accord ing to Gal lup, 9 per cent of Amer ic ans think AI will do more good than harm, versus 39 per cent who take the oppos ite view. To see how that trans lates to feel ings about OpenAI or Anthropic, try talk ing to, oh, any one who doesn’t own a stake in one or the other. What can the com pan ies do to regain trust? What is the right PR strategy for AI? Doomers will say it’s hope less. 

There is no way to put lip stick on a pig of a tech no logy that will make a few people rich while drain ing the live li hoods, pri vacy, free dom and nat ural resources of the many. For the uto pi ans, pro ductiv ity and abund ance will soothe all fears in a year or two. I don’t know where I am on that spec trum, but I have been talk ing with a lot of PR pro fes sion als lately, and have been think ing about cor por ate repu ta tion for years. Here, then, are five ideas for the industry, if it wants to put out the fire. Start with the basics. Be com pan ies, not cults. Enter prises that are worth almost a tril lion dol lars can not oper ate like founder-led start-ups. They need to be insti tu tions where the top job goes to who ever can do it best, under the super vi sion of a ser i ous board and account able to investors. 

OpenAI and Anthropic, in other words, can not afford to be iden ti fied with Sam Alt man and Dario Amodei in the way that Meta is iden ti fied with Mark Zuck er berg or SpaceX is iden ti fied with Elon Musk. The pub lic has to know that the boss is just a per son, one who can be sacked if things go wrong. In the mean time, Alt man and Amodei need to knock it off with the essays and mani fes tos. They’re creepy, and the com pany’s work needs to speak for itself. Hand in hand with this, don’t think you can pull a Travis Kalan ick. Uber’s cofounder drove an (app-hailed) tank through the objec tions of reg u lat ors and taxi drivers, bet ting that happy riders would form a pro-Uber con stitu ency that would carry the day even tu ally. It worked. But AI is much, much big ger than ride-hail ing. Many people’s pro fes sional lives are going to be rearranged by force (it’s already hap pen ing), and there will be a lot more of them than there ever were taxi drivers. 

Mean while, know that your repu ta tion for both char ac ter and com pet ence is under threat. I bor row the dis tinc tion from Rupert Younger of the Oxford Uni versity Centre for Cor por ate Repu ta tion. He points out that a poor repu ta tion for char ac ter is a rel at ively quick fix, usu ally involving get ting rid of senior lead er ship (see above). But when a com pany gains a repu ta tion for incom pet ence, it’s a long way back. When an exper i mental OpenAI model recently escaped its sand box, accessed the inter net and broke into another com pany’s serv ers, OpenAI said it took its respons ib il ity to pre pare for such incid ents “ser i ously” but described the incid ent as a tech no logy or industry prob lem — not an OpenAI prob lem.

 The incid ent was “something we expect to become more com mon place”, and “evid ence that, without proper safe guards, highly cap able AI agents are now able to work around tech nical con trols”. Next time, instead of gen er al it ies, Alt man could say this: “We have zero tol er ance for our mod els break ing the law, autonom ously or not, and all of our team mem bers — myself included — will be held account able for see ing that this does not hap pen again.” If you can’t say something like that, then either (a) you have made a tech no logy you can’t con trol, in which case you are bad at your job or (b) you like that it is out of con trol, in which case you are a bad per son. Com pet ence and char ac ter. Be assured your found a tion/think-tank is worse than use less as a PR strategy. Hir ing eco nom ists and philo soph ers to study how AI can be used for good may ulti mately expand the hori zons of know ledge.

 But given how low trust has fallen, every one will sus pect your found a tion is a sales front or an effort to con trol the reg u lat ory agenda. What the pub lic needs is not white papers. It is to see you doing good: projects where your work ers help fam il ies and small busi nesses prosper. Build something that changes the world now. That is a spe cific instance of a gen eral point: stop talk ing so much about the dis tant future. That is the times cale that Sil icon Val ley prefers. Back here on Earth, we are try ing to get to Christ mas. No one cares about a pro ductiv ity boom that may take a couple of years to arrive. Focus your PR efforts on what is hap pen ing today. Will AI com pan ies take this, or any other advice? Not while their valu ations are still scream ing higher. Money con- firms all strategies, even bad ones. But repu ta tion always mat ters even tu ally.