Key takeaways shared in “From AI Insight to AI Impact,” a ComNet 2026 session hosted by Claudia Deane, Executive Vice President, and Monica Anderson, Director, Internet and Technology Research, at Pew Research Center. For more about how Americans view AI, visit Pew Research Center’s Artificial Intelligence topic page.

Artificial intelligence systems have become an intermediary between trusted
information and the people who need it. For communications professionals,
it is vital to understand how AI tools may be changing the way people find, understand, and trust your organization’s work.

AI is here to stay. Your audiences are using it. It impacts direct traffic to your site. Accept that this is the reality today. 

Take a deeper look at your work. Test how your organization is appearing in AI engines. Experiment with making your current content more machine-readable.

Incorporate what you learn into your future content. You’re now writing for humans and machines.

1. Do you want people using AI chatbots to find and learn from your organization’s work?

• Discuss how AI discoverability supports your mission and communications goals  
• Decide whether you want AI systems to access and surface your work  
• Identify the topics, products and audiences for which AI visibility matters most  
• Define the outcome you want: accurate answers, clear attribution and a path back to your organization

2. How is your work showing up today? Is that what you want?

• Choose 10-20 real questions or prompts that should surface your expertise, research or data  
• Test the same questions across multiple AI platforms  
• Record whether your organization is mentioned, cited and linked  
• Ask a subject-matter expert to assess whether each answer is current, accurate and complete  
• Note patterns, including outdated information, weak attribution, missing links and facts that are not retrieved  
• Repeat the test periodically so you can see what changes

3. How do you make your work readable for machines?

• Adopt a simultaneous workflow; continue serving people while also preparing content for machines  
• Make the numbers and information behind graphics available as readable text, not just a static image  
• Improve metadata so machines can identify: subject, population, years covered, reports, datasets, authors, etc.  
• Create plain text or Markdown versions of major reports so essential content is easier for machines to retrieve  
• Audit your site for anything a scraper might struggle to find, interpret or connect

4. How do you know if you are succeeding?

• AI engines surface your information (visibility), represent it correctly (accuracy) and drive traffic to you (links)  
• Use multiple signals, including prompt-based benchmarks, AI crawler activity, mentions, citations and referral traffic  
• Assign an owner to test periodically across commonly used platforms and models

Download a PDF of the above guide for nonprofit communicators thinking about AI.

Learn how Americans view AI, including how adoption, use and concerns are changing at Pew Research Center’s Artificial Intelligence topic page.