When clients search your name, AI is speaking for you
Last Wednesday at a café, a client said 'I searched your name' — my heart sank. I quickly searched myself and found the AI summary had attributed my project to someone else. That feeling is like someone introducing you on your behalf and getting it completely wrong. I've been stuck here too — after discovering the error, I had no idea who to even contact to fix it.
This isn't trivial — someone lost their livelihood over it
On May 5th, Canadian Cape Breton fiddler Ron MacKinnon sued Google for $1.5 million — AI Overview incorrectly labeled him as a sex offender. His performance invitations dropped to zero, and it took him months to figure out why. If you build a personal brand or take on clients, AI search's description of you is your 'second business card' — and you can't write this card yourself. Now quite a few personal brand creators have started regularly searching themselves to see how AI introduces them.
You can check today
Money: $0. Time: 5 minutes. Technical barrier: just know how to type and search. First step: Open Google or Perplexity (an AI search website), search your name plus professional keywords, like 'Zhang Wei brand design', and see how the AI summary describes you. If you find errors, screenshot and save them. I also messed up the approach before — I only searched my name without adding professional terms, ended up with all these people who share the same name, panicked for nothing.
Depends on where you are
If you're just starting out and nobody's searching you yet — no rush to check now, wait until you have some exposure. If you have 1-2 clients — I'd suggest spending 5 minutes this week to search yourself. Knowing where you stand beats everything; at least you'll know where the problem is if you find errors. If you're scaling up — add 'brand name + AI search results' to your monthly checklist; if you find wrong info, publish correct content on your own website or public account, AI crawlers will pick it up and update. This tool isn't something everyone needs, but knowing about it itself is valuable.