How to Respond When AI Describes Your Brand Wrong

First, accept what you can and can’t change

You cannot edit the model. There’s no console where you log in and correct your entry. What you can change is the raw material the model draws from — the public web it was trained on and the live pages it retrieves. Every wrong answer is downstream of a source. Find and fix the source, and you’ve fixed the input that produced the error. That mindset keeps you from wasting energy arguing with a chatbot that won’t remember the conversation.

Step 1: Diagnose the error precisely

Vague complaints (“it’s wrong about us”) are hard to fix. Pin it down. Write the exact false statement, note which assistant produced it, and classify the type:

• Fact error — outdated price, wrong location, a service you no longer offer.
• Mistaken identity — it’s confusing you with a similarly named brand or a competitor.
• Unfair framing — the facts are roughly right but the tone or sentiment is off. (Sentiment is its own lens; see sentiment in AI citations.)

The type tells you where to look next, and noting the model matters because they disagree — a fix for ChatGPT may be irrelevant to Gemini.

Step 2: Find the likely source

Trace the claim back. An outdated fact usually lives on an outdated page — often one of your own you’d forgotten, or a stale directory listing with old hours or an old address. Mistaken identity often comes from thin or ambiguous self-description that lets the model blur you with someone else. Unfair framing tends to come from a loud negative third-party source that out-shouts your own pages. Ask: where on the web does this exact wrong idea already exist?

Step 3: Fix the source content

Now correct it at the origin. Update or remove the stale page. State the accurate fact in plain, crawlable language where the model will read it — and resolve identity confusion by making your name, category and specifics unmistakable, the same clarity work covered in why isn’t my brand showing up in ChatGPT? If the bad source is a platform you don’t control, request a correction and don’t stop there — proceed to corroboration.

Step 4: Add corroboration so the correct fact wins

One correct page rarely beats an entrenched wrong one. Models favour facts that several independent sources agree on, so make the accurate version appear in more than one place buyers and models both read. That weight is what tips a retrieval-grounded answer toward the truth. Which platforms carry that weight is covered in does Reddit, G2 and Trustpilot help you show up in AI? And make sure your corrected pages are genuinely citable — see what content actually gets cited by AI.

Step 5: Monitor until it lands

Corrections aren’t instant, and they vary by model and by whether the answer is retrieval-grounded or training-only. So watch for the change rather than assuming it. The practical way is to re-check what the assistants say about you on a cadence — the free Domain Check lets you see the queries and citations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, so you can confirm the corrected description is being picked up instead of guessing. Treat timelines as typical, not promised. Back to the AI Visibility for Small Business pillar.