The future of brand control isn’t in advertising or social media – it’s in documentation.
A recent experiment by Mateusz Makosiewicz of Ahrefs reveals the reality about how AI tools handle information on brands, and why every company needs to rethink their approach to public-facing content.
The fake paperweight experiment
Makosiewicz conducted a simple experiment. He invented a fictional luxury paperweight company and deliberately planted three fabricated stories about it across the internet. Then he watched what happened when various AI search tools encountered questions about this non-existent brand.
Nearly every AI tool he tested confidently repeated the false information. Some did so eagerly, others with apparent reluctance, but the outcome was the same: the misinformation spread. The most detailed narrative won, regardless of its relationship to truth.
The problem is that AI *will* talk about you
Makosiewicz uncovered a modern-day reality: AI systems will discuss your product or brand whether you participate in the conversation or not.
If you haven’t provided a clear, authoritative version of your product or brand, these tools will piece together their own narrative from whatever they find. That could be a convincing Reddit post, a user’s blog article, or a competitor’s description of your product.
This is happening right now.
Your knowledge base is part of the fix
The question facing every company is straightforward: if your product’s knowledge base isn’t publicly available, what information will ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools use when people ask about you?
For most software products, documentation represents the single largest body of available content. This gives it a huge influence over what AI tools surface in their responses.
This means your knowledge base is now more than just a customer support resource; it’s become a primary tool for controlling your product narrative in an AI-driven world.
The new rules of brand control
The experiment reveals a fundamental shift in how information authority works online. In the age of AI search, whoever provides the most comprehensive and accessible story wins.
Search engine optimisation used to mean gaming Google’s algorithms; now it means being the definitive source that AI tools can’t ignore.
This means documentation deserves the same strategic attention traditionally reserved for marketing content. It can’t be hidden behind a paywall, accessible only to customers and partners.
Instead, it needs to be:
- Comprehensive enough to answer the questions AI tools receive
- Publicly accessible so AI systems can find and reference it
- Authoritative in tone and substance
- Updated regularly to reflect current reality
The wider implications
Every company needs to consider what happens when someone asks an AI tool about their product, their company history, their competitive positioning, or their value proposition. Without official, accessible information, the AI will construct answers from whatever fragments it finds.
The most detailed story wins. Make sure it’s yours.
Taking action
The experiment demonstrates that AI misinformation isn’t something that might happen. It’s something that is happening. The window for establishing authoritative sources about your brand and products is open now, whilst these systems are still learning what to trust.
Your knowledge base can be your most effective tool for reclaiming control over your narrative. The alternative is letting AI tools piece together their version of your story from whatever they stumble across online, accurate or not.
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