Welcome to the latest Polaris newsletter featuring news and insights from PR geared towards maritime and engineering companies
This edition again examines the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how its aimless blade is wielding a kind of reputational chaos for businesses, as evidenced by the awful deepfake attack on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. But this is not simply an issue for those in the public eye. Maritime and engineering companies of all shapes and sizes are not immune. Being aware of how AI is disrupting how you promote yourself – and how you can protect your reputation – is the theme of this letter with practical tips and insights around deepfakes and AI search.
ON THE ROAD
Polaris is gearing up for a busy period out on the road in the U.S. and Europe in May and June. For all the AI hysteria, maritime and engineering are underpinned by relationships and the building of trust and understanding face-to-face. AI is a tool to facilitate awareness but sooner or later it runs out of road. The deal-making, the keynote speeches, and demonstrating you keep your word are jobs only you can do.
So, if you are hitting the road drop me a line to meet up at the Chicago Propeller Club where I’m now proud to be President. We’re hosting a “tech themed” Maritime Day cruise from Navy Pier on May 22 featuring global satcomms company Inmarsat – register here. On May 28, meanwhile, the club is hosting an Inland Marine Expo (IMX) party at Morgan Wallen’s bar on Nashville’s bustling Broadway in partnership with the International Propeller Club and port insurer Armada Risk Partners.
Elsewhere I’m looking forward to joining clients and contacts again at Posidonia in Athens, surely the best maritime show? And I’ll be at Electric & Hybrid in Amsterdam with our marine battery client AYK.
I’m also delighted to report my new Amazon best-selling book, Making Waves: PR strategies to transform your maritime business, is out now as an audio book on audible, watch a snippet below. I hope it can help stimulate ideas while you’re walking the dog, working out or reflecting while on holiday.
Wishing you a successful early summer. And thank you to Charlie Miller and Jon Barbuti on the Polaris team for help with this edition.
Best wishes
Ben Pinnington
Managing Partner
Polaris Media
Chicago, United States
WATCH MAKING WAVES SAMPLE, CLICK IMAGE BELOW
Are you prepared for a deep fake impersonating you or your colleagues?
If you think you or your company is an unlikely candidate for a deep fake attack think again. The pace of change with deepfakes is breathtaking and bewildering. Just check the latest Rolling Stones music video which thrillingly and rather disturbingly ‘digitally de-ages’ the band. And this is the point: the tech is now there for your CEO or team to be presented on social media or even on a Teams call as a deepfake. This could be saying or doing things that could damage your reputation. It is vital you have a plan in place to rapidly counter this. Having real time responses on your X and LinkedIn feeds and your website is the basic requirement reinforced by press statements to respected industry titles.
The most recent high-profile victim of deepfake was Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who criticized the circulation of AI-generated deepfake images of her, including one depicting her in lingerie, after they were widely shared online prompting a wave of condemnation from users who believed it to be genuine.
Meloni responded quickly writing on Facebook: “In recent days, several fake images of me have been circulating, generated using artificial intelligence and passed off as real by some overzealous opponents. I must admit that whoever created them … even improved my appearance quite a bit. But the fact remains that, in order to attack and spread falsehoods, people are now willing to use absolutely anything.”
To review your communications plan to counteract deep fakes and misinformation drop me a line.
How to feature in AI search – the evolving landscape
The jagged frontier of AI search, or GEO, is a regular theme of this newsletter and its evolution shows no sign of slowing down. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are the new stakeholders that can influence how your company is discovered and perceived.
LLMs are replacing traditional search engines. And if you are not featured you are increasingly not part of the public conversation. Influencing LLMs is not a technical IT department function, it is PR discipline. This is because AI search draws on the publicity you generate, and content you write, on your website and LinkedIn. LLMs do not look for backlinks as with traditional SEO. LLMs look for mentions in credible maritime and engineering trade press (see my last tips article on this) and readership or viewers don’t always count.
What LLMs draw on is writing by a person, no AI slop, and recency. If you are featured in a podcast or YouTube interview even with a relatively small audience, the reach of the show is not what matters to AI. What does matter is ensuring the content is original and transcribed which AI loves to index.
Here are some new insights*:
- YouTube is now cited in 16% of LLM answers, beating Reddit (Bluefish, Jan 2026, reported by Adweek)
- LinkedIn is the #2 most-cited domain across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity (SEMrush, 325,000 prompts, Feb 2026)
- LinkedIn articles/newsletter function drive 50 to 66% of LinkedIn’s AI citations, and the platform jumped from rank #11 to #5 on ChatGPT in three months (Profound, 1.4M citations, Nov 2025 to Feb 2026)
- The newsletter platform Substack is now an earned media engine, like a news website, that LLMs crawl as a trusted, high-engagement source (PR Daily, Oct 2025) . Substack alone has 5M+ paid subscriptions feeding LLM training and indexing.
- Content updated within 30 days gets 3.2x more AI citations than older content (Cross-platform LLM analysis, Q1 2026)
TOP TIP
- A BIG takeaway from this data is to embrace newsletters. Publish on LinkedIn and Substack more as well as to your own Mailchimp-style database. Not only do maritime professionals want more granular content, so does AI.
*Source EvansGlobal