• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, July 6, 2026

Misinformation from news snippets and features can move media buying deeper into negativity that perpetuates incorrect information about a brand.

Once false narratives begin to circulate and serve up across AI answer engines, brands have a difficult time removing them from platforms like Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing, which integrates Microsoft Copilot.

“Some misinformation makes its way into the base model, making it more difficult to correct because it sticks around until the next round of deep training,” Andrew Frank, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, told MediaPost.

When misinformation appears in a media channel like Google AI Overviews or OpenAI ChatGPT, it’s not unusual to see brands pause campaigns. Often those systems run on “automatic pilot” and marketers use the platform's mechanisms in the platform to buy media and check requirements.

Platforms may identify an increase in searches as consumer intent and automatically raise bids on those queries without human approval. This creates new challenges for media buyers when it comes to allocation and campaign creative, as brands work to avoid continuing campaigns that spread misinformation about them.

“You end up funding your own character assassination,” Frank said. “It’s affecting media buys, because it’s creating a new requirement to be plugged in to disinformation attention systems, so they can react more quickly.”

Frank said clients have come to Gartner claiming AI has provided false information about their brand. It inspired academic and practical research, as well as surveys by Gartner to provide best practices. There’s an ongoing network of researchers, universities and think tanks that have tried to come up useable formulas when these things happen.

Gartner published a book -- World Without Truth: How Business Must Confront the AI-Powered Disinformation Supply Chain -- which details what happens when “to the world when AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from lived experience?” or when “fact-based reasoning gives way to outrage-driven impulses at scale?

Earlier this year, Gartner estimated the strategic and operational risks associated with disinformation represent a trillion-dollar problem for the global economy.

Misinformation, disinformation and factual information used out of context called malinformation (MDM) represents more than one-trillion-dollar problem for the global economy that threatens the foundations of social cohesion.