When AI Rewrites a Brand: A Case Study of Generative AI and Brand Image

Sammanfattning

This study addresses a gap in existing research by examining how generative AI contributes to the construction and representation of a company’s brand. The research question is as follows: “How do generative AI descriptions align with, contribute to or deviate from a company’s intended corporate brand image and brand identity?”. Using a qualitative research design in the form of a case study of Mannheimer Swartling, a law firm, the study combines prompt-based data harvesting and semi-structured interviews with communication professionals. It explores AI-generated descriptions from 5 different personas and how these responses are interpreted by communication professionals, and how such responses may influence Mannheimer Swartling’s brand. The results show that AI descriptions align with the intended corporate brand in some ways, but also reconstruct the brand through external sources, produce persona-dependent brand reconstructions, apply stereotypes and gap-filling, hallucinate and make errors, and exclude information from responses. These findings suggest that AI-generated descriptions both align with and deviate from a company’s intended corporate brand image and brand identity, while also contributing to the construction of that brand.