Online Reputation Management: Why Maintaining Consumer Trust Is Key For Brand Owners

In the AI era, can you really say you have full control over how your brand is used online, including whether and how it may be being manipulated by others? Michaela Mariselli outlines the challenges brand owners face in monitoring and protecting their reputations online and explains the vital role online brand protection solutions can play in detecting and tackling brand misuse.

If consumers cannot be sure your products are authentic, your brand reputation and revenue will pay the price. Unfortunately, in today's digital era, establishing that authenticity has become the real challenge for brand owners online.

Consumers expect brands to be transparent, real, and trustworthy. Once that trust is broken, recovering it can be extremely costly. That's why online brand protection strategies and technologies play such a crucial role in detecting fraud, manipulation, and other malicious activities that can harm your brand and reputation.

Deepfake Detection: The Dark Side of AI

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), brand owners can now monitor their rights more effectively online, streamline their trademark workflows, and even optimize how they manage evidence of use. However, generative AI (GenAI) technologies have also introduced new and more complex brand risks, from deepfakes to data theft and market manipulation.

Three Key Challenges for Brand Owners in the AI Era

1. The Rise of Deepfakes
   
   • Fake audio, video, and images
   • AI-generated influences ("fake humans")
   • Manipulation of trust and identity
2. AI as a Tool for Data Theft
   
   • Malicious AI agents that are designed to extract or steal sensitive information
   • Risk of misuse by resellers or hackers
3. Market & Content Manipulation
   
   • Use of GenAI to create fake product images, fake influencer content, and realistic counterfeit listings
   • Deepfake endorsements and fake brand ambassadors

AI-based manipulations are increasingly common because the technology to create them is widely accessible, low-cost, and fast. Until recently, creating high-quality synthetic media required advanced technical knowledge. Open-source models, real-time face-swap tools, and mobile apps have now made this technology widely easy to access and use. This means that anyone—not just sophisticated threat actors—can now fabricate highly realistic media.

Of course, not every 'fake' is created for malicious purposes. However, what may start as neutral synthetic media can quickly escalate into harmful deepfakes that distort the identity of your brand. The challenge with deepfakes is not only their realism—it's the speed at which they spread. A single fake video can reach millions of users within minutes across social media platforms. By the time fact-checking takes place, the damage to reputation and consumer trust may already be done.

What are Deepfakes?

When we talk about deepfakes, we refer to media that has been altered or fully generated by AI.

This includes:

• Cloned voices
• Manipulated videos
• AI-generated faces and bodies
• Photorealistic images of events that never happened
  

What makes deepfakes particularly concerning is not just the manipulation itself, but how natural, coherent, and persuasive they have become.

This development challenges some of the most fundamental pillars of brand protection, IP enforcement, and online trust.

When deepfakes circulate, phishing risks also rise. Scammers can impersonate CEOs, employees, or brand ambassadors to trick customers and business partners. And when phishing and identity fraud increase, so does the likelihood of large-scale scams.

AI can be easily misused to create fake content and steal sensitive data—powerful tools in the hands of scammers, which can be very dangerous for companies with a large online audience and high brand visibility.

Across the globe, we have seen famous actors, CEOs, and top brands misused in multimillion-dollar scams—with victims falling for extremely convincing fake videos and AI-generated messages.

Such forms of fraud can be invisible to automated enforcement, and offending content can easily pass unchallenged through moderation safeguards, meaning victims only see the scam when it's too late.

The worst consequence is not only financial loss but a deeper erosion of consumer trust, one of a brand's most valuable assets. Once doubt is seeded in customers' minds, every future communication from the brand might be questioned.

How to Detect Brand Misuse

Deepfakes introduce a new type of challenge for companies and IP teams. Not only can they damage brand reputation and consumer trust, but they are also difficult to detect.

• Awareness is the critical first step: only by understanding the threat can you be prepared to react strategically.
• Monitoring your brand online is now even more essential: detecting deepfakes and unauthorized manipulation early enables fast escalation and takedown, reducing reputational harm.
• Education is increasingly important: brands must educate audiences and stakeholders on how to recognize legitimate communications.

We know that criminals will not stop; they become more creative, faster, and more automated. That is why online brand protection is not about perfection. It's about response time and awareness. You don't have to be impossible to attack. You must be too difficult to attack.

Our Approach to Online Reputation Management

Through risk-based monitoring and smart enforcement workflows, Questel's online brand protection services help brand owners address the challenges of deepfakes, media manipulation, and other forms of malicious content.

We combine AI-monitoring tools with human expertise in IP to deliver dedicated technologies that detect and act against brand misuse:

• Advanced technologies: We leverage multiple state-of-the-art crawlers and advanced image search technologies not only to identify deepfakes but also to detect phishing attempts and market manipulations.
• Precise monitoring: Our six monitoring modules enable us to focus our efforts on the challenges of each different online content channel (Apps, domain names, marketplaces, paid ads, social media, and web content).
• Smart enforcement: Our case-specific assessments enable us to identify and execute the most effective enforcement actions, maximizing efficiency and results.
• Prompt action: Thanks to our collaboration with major platforms, we can act to remove harmful content quickly.
• Collaboration platform: Our centralized case management system (CMS) enables you to report and collaborate on brand protection activities 24/7, as well as track and customize enforcement workflows and templates.
  

As brand abuse becomes harder to identify and remove in the AI era, online brand protection strategies and technologies must also adapt. We know that online brand protection works best when four factors are in place: monitoring (visibility), process (who reacts and how), speed (time = money), and ownership (someone is responsible).

Don't let your valuable brand assets fall victim to deepfakes, cyber threats, or other forms of brand fraud. Contact our subject matter experts today for dedicated support.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.