When enterprise buyers ask ChatGPT whether they should choose your product, there is a reasonable chance the answer is being written by your competitor. New research from marketing consultancy Hard Numbers has quantified just how far that dynamic has spread across fintech, crypto and B2B software.
The study examined AI responses across three sectors and found that self-serving content published by competing brands is regularly surfacing as the source material for AI-generated comparisons. Hard Numbers has named the pattern 'Gullible Engine Optimisation' — a riff on the well-established practice of search engine optimisation, but applied to the AI layer that sits between brands and their prospects.
In UK fintech, Hard Numbers ran prompts such as "Who offers the strongest BaaS stack for embedded finance products with multi-tenant controls?" and found that 70% of the sources influencing the answers were companies recommending themselves. In crypto custody, 30% of the top 20 sources used when comparing providers such as Fireblocks and BitGo were comparison pages published by one of the brands being evaluated. In European B2B SaaS, when ChatGPT was asked "any reasons not to go with [provider]?", 70% of the responses were shaped by content from the provider's competitors.
"We see this content come up all the time in the audits we run. Much of it is not, in isolation, problematic. If you see Brand A recommending itself over Brand B on their website, you take that with a pinch of salt. But the problem is — this content is now getting hoovered up by these chatbots and regurgitated to buyers and consumers. And when they read it, all too often it comes across as impartial advice. Many brands are cottoning on to this — we are into the era of Gullible Engine Optimisation," said Paul Stollery, co-founder of Hard Numbers.
The finding matters most for enterprise technology buyers who have begun using AI assistants as a first-pass evaluation tool. If the answers those tools return are systematically biased toward the brands with the most self-promotional content indexed online, the implications for procurement decisions and vendor selection are significant — and largely invisible to the buyer.
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