Your corporate website isn’t dead. AI just made it important again.

The Background

For years, corporate websites have had a bit of an identity crisis. Everyone knows they need one, but few people are entirely sure who is actually reading it.

Now AI might be about to change that.

This week, Moira Gilchrist, Chief Global Communications Officer at Philip Morris International, made an interesting point in a Business Insider interview about the renewed importance of corporate websites.

She said:

“Our corporate website has become an important vehicle for us to set the record straight because large language models are accessing the information that is on there.”

That is the bit that caught my attention.

For years, the question has been: “Will anyone actually visit this page?”

Increasingly, perhaps we should also be asking: “Will AI understand it?”

People are now asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other AI tools the sorts of questions they previously typed into Google. What does this company do? What does it stand for? What is it like to work there? What is its position on a particular issue?

The answer may increasingly be assembled from multiple sources, including the information organisations publish themselves.

So whether someone physically visits your corporate website may become less important than whether the information on it is clear, credible, current and understandable.

Your website has a new audience

I’m not suggesting we start writing corporate communications for robots. Please don’t. We have enough corporate nonsense already.

But communications teams now have another audience sitting alongside employees, customers, journalists, investors and candidates: the AI systems people are increasingly using to find and interpret information.

Those systems weren’t at your leadership conference. They haven’t read your five-year strategy deck and they don’t know what “Project Falcon” means.

They work with what you publish.

That makes clear language, consistent messages, useful content and credible evidence even more important.

And it raises a very simple question:

If I asked an AI tool what your organisation stands for, would you recognise the answer?

Try it.

Because whatever comes back is increasingly becoming part of your reputation.

You cannot control everything an AI system says about you, but you can control the quality of the information you put into the world.

If your website is vague, outdated or full of corporate language that doesn’t really say anything, AI is not going to magically make it clearer.

The corporate website has a new job

In an AI-led information environment, the website becomes more than a corporate brochure.

It becomes a source of truth about the organisation.

That means websites cannot just look good. They need substance.

When we work with organisations on website development, the conversation is never just about design. It is about story, structure, tone of voice, user journeys, content and whether people can actually understand the organisation.

AI makes all of that more important, not less. And no, I don’t think SEO is dead.

People have not stopped using Google, but the way information is discovered is changing. Traditional search helped people find a page. Generative search increasingly tries to provide the answer.

So perhaps the job is not to “write for AI”. Perhaps it is simply to publish useful, authoritative and well-structured information that actually says something.

Revolutionary, I know.

Internal Comms needs to be part of this too

There is an Internal Comms angle here that is just as important.

Many organisations effectively tell different versions of themselves internally and externally. Marketing owns the website, Internal Comms owns the intranet, HR owns employer branding and Corporate Affairs owns reputation.

Over time, the language drifts.

The website says one thing. Employees hear another. Recruitment messaging introduces a third version.

AI does not care about your organisational chart. It simply consumes information.

That is why consistency across internal and external channels matters.

Your website might explain what the organisation stands for externally. Your intranet and internal communications need to help employees understand what that means inside the business.

Those stories should not be identical, but they should certainly recognise each other.

The same applies to internal AI tools. If your intranet contains old policies, duplicate documents and contradictory information, adding AI does not suddenly create a great employee experience.

It may simply create a faster way of finding the wrong answer.

So what should comms teams do?

Start simple.

Ask AI questions about your organisation and look critically at what comes back. Review your website as if you knew nothing about the business. Look for vague language, outdated information and conflicting messages.

Then do the same internally.

Ask where your organisation’s definitive information actually lives and who is responsible for keeping it accurate.

If the answer is currently “erm…”, that is exactly the sort of problem we get under the bonnet of in a Kick Start session.

No giant transformation programme. No 97-slide AI strategy. Just clarity about the problem, the audiences, the channels and what needs fixing.

My Comms Take

AI is not killing the corporate website.

It might actually be forcing organisations to take it seriously again.

The opportunity is not learning another new acronym. It is getting much better at something communications professionals should already care deeply about:

Making complicated organisations understandable.

So here is the question I’d like comms teams to try.

Ask your AI tool:

What does my organisation stand for?

Then ask yourself:

Is that the story we thought we were telling?

And if you work in Comms, Internal Comms, Marketing or Digital, I’d be interested to know: does AI make owned channels like websites and intranets more important, or are we overestimating their role?

Source

Business Insider: “Meet the Chief Communications Officer Helping Philip Morris International Reinvent Its Reputation”
‍
Interview with Moira Gilchrist, Chief Global Communications Officer, Philip Morris International, August 2026.

‍