Who's steering? AI, authenticity, authority, and the credibility race in maritime communications

At London International Shipping Week in September 2025, BLUE held a panel discussion which touched on AI and its relationship with PR, brand, marketing and communications. The conclusions were clear: AI lacks the judgment to replace human insight; communicators have a duty to be vanguards of credibility; and authenticity, not automation, is what algorithms and audiences reward.

But significant questions remained unanswered. Nine months on, they are more pressing than ever. On 25 June 2026 at the Frontline Club, London, BLUE's team leaders across brand, insight, PR and digital marketing will reconvene to go further.

The conversation starts with a provocation: an AI tool will now give your clients, your investors and your competitors a confident answer about your company, your sustainability credentials and your market position, whether you've shaped that answer or not. So: who's actually steering?

Searching for answers: the stakes are higher than most organisations realise

We can look at digital marketing and search engines in particular to immediately see AI’s effect. The shift in how decision-makers and decision-influencers find and evaluate companies in the maritime, energy and carbon sectors has been building for some time, but AI-driven search has accelerated it sharply. New McKinsey research shows that unprepared brands may experience a decline in traffic from traditional search channels of anywhere from 20 to 50 per cent, describing AI search as the new front door to the internet. For maritime and energy businesses, where buying cycles are long and trust is hard-won, the implications are considerable.

What makes this more than a PR and digital marketing problem is the reliability question. AI is confident by design. It produces fluent, authoritative-sounding answers regardless of whether those answers are accurate. In specialist industries, the gap between a plausible answer and an empirically correct one can be significant. As Rhys Thomas, BLUE's Insight Lead, puts it: "Whilst AI predicts the next word, experienced consultants know what the next question should be."

The misinformation risk is real and documented. AI systems have been shown to fabricate quotes, invent sources and generate authoritative-sounding content that bears little relation to a company's actual position or track record. In markets where regulatory scrutiny is intense and reputational damage travels fast, that is not an abstract concern. In the maritime, energy and carbon markets, where technical precision truly matters and trust is at a premium, these risks to your reputation are amplified.

The credibility gap

Compounding this is the growing body of evidence on how B2B buyers are using AI in the early stages of vendor research. Forrester and Edelman both publish research suggesting AI tools are increasingly influencing shortlisting decisions before a buyer ever reaches a company's own website. The brands appearing in those AI-generated answers are not necessarily the biggest or most established. They are the ones that have built what Google's own framework describes as E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the signals AI systems use to assess whether a source is worth referencing.

Amie Pascoe, Director, frames it this way: "The full discipline of PR and communications, reputation management, stakeholder engagement, media relations, thought leadership, and executive profiling has never carried more strategic weight. PR is a frontline commercial capability."

Mark Stokes, Brand & Creative Lead, makes the case from a brand perspective: "AI-generated brand is everywhere and a genuinely differentiated brand is rare. Human input and authenticity are now an algorithmic advantage as well as a commercial one."

What it takes to build authority AI recognises

The practical question, and the focus of BLUE's second panel session on 25 June, is what organisations can do about this. Katie Dean, BLUE's Digital Marketing Lead, will examine what it takes to build a web of credibility: insightful content, trusted media presence and community validation, and how the rise of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is changing how maritime and energy companies need to think about their digital presence.

"The conversation will examine what BLUE's auditing is revealing about where most companies currently stand," Katie says, "and what practical steps organisations can take to ensure they are the ones AI surfaces, cites, and recommends."

What that auditing is revealing should give most communications and marketing leaders pause. The gap between genuine expertise and AI visibility is wider than most assume, and it is opening faster than most organisations are moving.

Why BLUE is leading this conversation

Collectively, the BLUE team brings 265 years of experience in maritime, energy and carbon markets. Where AI draws on the internet, BLUE draws on people who have spent careers inside these industries, interpreting signals that algorithms miss and translating genuine expertise into communications that hold up to scrutiny.

The organisations that will define their own narratives and hold visibility online are not the ones using AI the most. They are the ones whose expertise, credibility and market knowledge mean AI already knows who they are and recommends them. 

It is becoming clear that the AI era demands more proactive stewardship of an organisation’s brand – only through leveraging authenticity, authority and credibility can an organisation truly control its communications and tell its story. 

Register here to join our upcoming panel discussion “Who’s steering? AI, authenticity, authority, and the credibility race in maritime, energy & carbon communications”.

25 June 2026 | 3:30 – 6 pm | Frontline Club, Paddington, London