ChatGPT is selling your competitor's product.
By Joanna Lambadjieva · September 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
ChatGPT is selling your competitor's product.
Not yours.
Your influencers can change that.
58% of shoppers now ask AI what to buy.
Then purchase inside the answer.
No Google. No website. No ad click.
So where does AI get its recommendations?
Not from your product page.
Not from your blog.
Not from anything you wrote about yourself.
85% of what AI cites about your brand comes from other people.
Reviews. "Best of" lists. Comparison videos. Blog breakdowns.
Written by creators. On their own platforms.
That's influencer content.
And right now most brands treat it as a sales channel.
Post. Click. Convert. Done.
They're missing the bigger play entirely.
Every piece of content an influencer publishes about your product
becomes training material for the AI that recommends what to buy.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, they all pull from the open web.
And influencer content is exactly the kind of third-party evidence they trust.
One brand saying "we're the best" = an ad.
A hundred creators saying it independently = proof.
AI quotes proof.
The economics make it almost unfair:
✓ Commissions only trigger on sales - the AI visibility is free
✓ More creators = more citations = more default recommendations
✓ Only 16% of brands track this - first movers own the AI answer
I went deep on this in UpPromote's Partnership Ads eBook, it completely changed how I think about influencer programs in the context of optimising for AI visibility.
If you want the guide, let me know and I'll send it over.