Transcript for Cutting Through podcast Season 2 Episode 3

Return to the podcast episode page to listen and find additional resources

Jonathan Holt   This is Cutting Through, the podcast for corporate digital communicators, and today on the podcast we're taking on one of the preeminent buzzwords of our times, “authenticity”. As AI-generated videos, articles, and imagery proliferate online, being authentic is said to be your best bet for standing out. But what does it mean in practice?

Is it really the answer to all our communications ills? And as AI tools get better and better at faking reality, is authenticity even real?

As has happened often on the podcast, I'm joined in the virtual podcasting studio by Scott Payton, Chief Executive of Bowen Craggs, and Georgia Barrett, Vice President, USA. 

Scott and Georgia, some prominent people in communications and technology have started the year by saying we're at a tipping point in terms of the line between humans and artificial intelligence. Elon Musk took time away from defending his AI tool Grok and selling the same AI tool into the US military to proclaim, among any other things I guess that he's been up to, to proclaim that we're at Singularity, which is said to be the moment when AI starts to think for itself and propel its own self-improvement.

And at the very end of last year, so technically not this year, but leading into it, Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram said via his account on that platform that “2026 will be the year that AI content becomes as authentic as anything humans can create”. Do you think they're right? Are we approaching or in the midst of, or have we already blown past the point where human authenticity and AI authenticity are basically on par?

Scott Payton   Well, I think no, to start off with. I think it's really important that there's a massive difference between something that looks authentic and something that is authentic.

And I think this is all in some ways it's new, but in some ways it's ancient because the art world has dealt with this for centuries. And just because a painting is almost indistinguishable from an original Van Gogh, it doesn't mean that it's, you know, it has the same authenticity and value. The fashion world has dealt with this for decades in terms of knockoff handbags, knockoff handbags, and knockoff t-shirts and things.

So I think the key is who created something, how they created it and why they created it is the key to authenticity rather than how plausible it is. And I think that's true whether it's a LinkedIn post or a CEO video or an article or a painting or a handbag.

And for corporate communications, then yes, artificial intelligence opens the door to producing lots of content that doesn't need to be genuinely authentic. It just needs to be clear, concise and accurate. And if AI can do that, then hooray. But it also paves the way for authentically human content being more powerful and valuable than ever in a range of different situations and contexts. That's what I think.

Georgia Barrett   Yeah, I really like Scott's point about how even though it seems like very new problem with this question of not being able to believe what we see with our own eyes.

But like you say, we've been dealing with this for centuries. So I also went down a similar route when I was thinking about this question, very philosophical question of what is authenticity. So I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which charts usage of the word through time. And one of the definitions is

“The quality of truthful correspondence between inner feelings and their outward expression”. 

So it's basically are you being true to yourself? And I think that's always been an interesting question in corporate communications. There's always been a bit of a tension between what a company says and what is the reality.

So I guess, how do we address this tension? I think will be discussed throughout this podcast episode, but I agree with what Scott said about there's going to be a new emphasis on credibility, on verification signals, on trust signals, on facts and statistics to support the points that you are making in your corporate communications.

Jonathan   This is very similar actually to what Adam Mosseri at Instagram had to say in his really quite long Instagram essay, you know, styled as an Instagram post, which you click through images but it had quite a lot of ideas in it. And one thing he said was, and I quote,

“In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity by being real, transparent, and consistent will stand out.” 

Scott   I thought he made some great points. It was a great essay. I think to pick up that direct quote from him, the importance of being real, transparent and consistent, being a key to authenticity, I totally agree. That's certainly one marker of authenticity. When people watch or read any piece of content, they will be, and they are, asking themselves, Is this really what it claims to be?

To go back to Georgia's point about the link between inner truth and outer truth, I suppose. Everyone's asking that. I mean, I've just been, for work, I've been trawling through the glory that is X these days. And you're constantly asking yourself, is this post really what it claims to be? And I agree that sources of information that consistently make it clear that the answer is yes, the information that people regularly come from this source is what it claims to be, that's the key to winning trust and respect.

And in the early days of Twitter, that was a key to its success. And that's why so many journalists, 15, 20, 15 years ago, so many journalists used Twitter as their favourite social channel because it was full of people. It was full of real tweets about real things and real people. And in the current days of X that success as a trusted channel with real tweets about real things is totally lost. So I think Adam Mosseri is on to something.

Georgia   There's this quote in the very long essay about “authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible and that has resulted in this shift away from what is being said to who is saying it” and I think there's a point to be made here about what you can do on your corporate digital channels and on your corporate website.

I think there's a renewed emphasis on the who, so the named employees at your company, captioning photographs of employees with the names of who they are. So more of an emphasis on the real people, the real experts who work alongside you. 

Jonathan   Let's talk a bit about how this plays out on social media and maybe particularly on LinkedIn because that is the, that has in recent years become a sort of safe house for, you know, more serious  dialogue and refuge from the more extreme things that have been playing out for a while and are crescendoing on other channels, Instagram... all of them really: Facebook, Instagram, and of course X, but arguably LinkedIn and there's a lot of commentary on LinkedIn itself about this is no longer the real place that it once was because there's so much AI generated content. Is there authenticity on LinkedIn anymore?

Scott   I personally have a love-hate relationship with LinkedIn. On some days I have a hate-hate relationship with LinkedIn to be honest, but I think it is and there is a lot of AI slop on LinkedIn as you say, but ultimately LinkedIn is about real people trying to make real connections with other real people. So it has that fundamentally in its favour. And there is currently a lot of flux in terms of what authenticity means on LinkedIn.

But if you look at some of the most influential people on LinkedIn with the largest number of followers, most success and if you also if you look at the most successful corporate LinkedIn feeds, they tend to offer something unique, genuinely unique and distinctive in terms of perspectives, opinions or useful information. So I think in this, at the risk of stretching the definition of authenticity to breaking point, I think in LinkedIn offering something unique and useful is a key to kind of standing out.

Georgia   Yeah, agree. Its kind of originality is becoming more linked with authenticity. So it's about can you create something that only you can create? So if you're the CEO of a big company, what is your original perspective that only you can create?

And then when it comes to LinkedIn, the London School of Economics did some interesting research about what makes an authentic post. And it's less about "is it a selfie of me in the factory" and more about "is there verifiable proof"? You know, where is this factory that I'm taking a picture in, who are the people that I'm with, are there specific numbers and verifiable facts and external validation. It's more about adding in those trust signals

Scott   I was thinking about what we're seeing now and is in a lot of business leaders, what they are doing in the last six months or so is something that I remember them doing increasingly in 2016, 2017, which was starting to increasingly put their head above the parapet and taking a stand and a robust and distinctive position on social issues, political issues and cultural issues. I think that is something that is, that certainly, obviously it carries, also we could do a whole entire podcast about whether, when companies should get involved in political issues. But I think it is part of the importance of having something fresh and distinctive to say on LinkedIn. It's really important.

Jonathan   Yeah, in theory, on a LinkedIn that is overpopulated by AI-written screeds that don't really have any heart and soul to them, it shouldn't be all that difficult to stand out, should it? 

Scott   I think one thing is, generally speaking, on LinkedIn, people prefer to follow people than to follow companies. So I think a way to succeed is to, you know, is to kind of really, really kind of focus on real people and specific perspectives. I think that's easier in the round than trying to make a successful corporate LinkedIn feed. Of course, it's important to make a successful corporate, company-wide LinkedIn feed, but I think it's easier to be distinctive and authentic at an individual feed level.

Jonathan   I want to raise now the possibility that AI-generated content can actually have a certain ring of authenticity to it in the sense that  it can represent something that you can't unsee, that elaborates a truth almost that maybe wouldn't even be possible in more real information.

Scott   I do think that there is a massive and exciting place for AI content to, AI content does open up possibilities to produce, communicate information in ways that were not possible before.

So I don't think it is, and it is, I think everybody needs to accept that we are going to be increasing the living in a world in which AI has been involved in the creation of a lot of the information and the content that we consume. And I think we need to kind of make peace with that rather than to take a kind of Luddite approach that, you know, AI content is bad and human content is good. I think that's just a sort of, I think that's not the right approach.
But I think it is, it's important to be judicious and thoughtful about what should be, what... where it is appropriate to produce, use AI to produce content, and where it is actually best and more appropriate to ensure that a message or a piece of information or a piece of material comes directly from a human?

Jonathan   Yeah, so one way to come at this might be to wonder whether all this talk about authenticity maybe is slightly a red herring. I think a lot of people are less concerned at least on the face of things with whether something is authentic and with whether it is even real.  And is that perhaps the question that we need to dig into a bit? Because how do we determine whether something is real?

Georgia   Yes, I think it's getting increasingly difficult because you can't...

We've reached the point now, as you say, where you can't tell just by looking at it. So I think it's going to be down to the platforms that we use.

I think Instagram and LinkedIn should play, like these platforms should play a role in telling you where has this content come from and who is behind it. And I think the context of the person posting is going to become more important as well.

And then at a more technical level, there's things like the Content Authenticity Initiative, which is a coalition of different organisations and they're all about creating this end-to-end system for digital content provenance using open source tools. 

So they're creating this chain of custody so that from the moment an image or a piece of content is created there is information about how this was created which is shared throughout every stage of the journey and that includes if it has been edited or altered in any way and then they have a pin like a content credentials pin which is on the content and it shows, you know, the sort of,  yeah, the chain of custody. So I think we'll see more of that type of thing, like credentials for information, because you can't just rely on your eyes anymore. It is a new form of digital literacy, but even the most adept person can't necessarily tell.

Jonathan   So a lot of this is about trust, isn't it? And a lot of it probably comes down to subtleties. 

So I'll give an example that I think sort of epitomises this from the world of geopolitical events, and then maybe we can try and bring this back to more of a corporate communications context. But in the United States and all around the world, everyone, many people have seen videos of an incident involving two women and an ICE, immigration enforcement agent in Minneapolis. And people seem to be drawing very, very different conclusions about what occurred and what the meaning of this incident is.   
Anyway, I saw a media reconstruction of that incident using three different available cell phone, you know, video feeds. And again, I'm thinking about subtleties here because I noticed that – this was MS Now network – and that the, on the screen, the three videos were attributed to the person whose phone, the name of the person whose phone they were captured on was there. You know, a lot of people wouldn't have noticed that detail, but it stuck out to me because clearly the media outlet is saying: we know that people, some people won't trust this. We want it to be as trusted and to seem as authentic as possible.

And I thought immediately, because of course we all spend our heads so much in the digital space of how Bowen Craggs has long urged companies to include captions on their images because that subtle detail does make a difference on what the people think. That's a real person and not just some sort of model that they've taken off of the Getty Image Library. 

So I guess what I've just done is bring this back to the corporate digital communication space and I want to ask you both if you can maybe offer a few more points about what within this context specifically people can do to project reality, authenticity and trust in their information? 

Scott   Being useful, being informative, focusing absolutely, as you say Jonathan, on real, named people and also having personality and not being too scripted. So the more human you can be the better. And I think using real, named people is a very powerful way of doing that .

Georgia   There's this movement on Instagram, which was away from the sort of polished highlight reel of your life to something more quote unquote “authentic”, which is more messy, more behind the scenes. Like instead of a plate of food at the dinner table in the nice restaurant, it's the plate of food that has been eaten with like knives and forks everywhere, just a bit messy, a bit undone. So I think there's that side of authenticity in the way we communicate.

Scott   Yeah, and I think, I was thinking about precedents for the explosion in AI generated content, and one thing that occurred to me was almost 30 years ago, George Lucas made the second Star Wars trilogy. Do remember that? There was there was an awful lot of CGI in it. There was an awful lot of computer generated imagery in it. And there was a massive backlash against that,  because everything in it looked like a computer game. 

So about 10 years ago, J.J. Abrams made the third Star Wars trilogy. About 10 years ago, I think the first one came out in 2015. And he went big on what he called “practical effects”, so-called practical effects. So as little as possible was made using CGI. And they made physical spaceships out of probably out of plywood. But, know, they were, you could sit in them and they made a physical Yoda puppet. I think one and there was a huge everyone was really pleased about that. So I think one differentiator, certainly in  some forms of media, something that is tangibly physical, not digital, is one differentiator.

Jonathan   I'm glad you brought up an example like Star Wars because something that used to be true then and up until very recently was that it was often very difficult  to simulate reality and there was this notion of the Uncanny Valley.  And so we seem to have entered a topsy-turvy kind of place where  even things that seem unreal might not be unreal anymore. I mean, are we all living in the Uncanny Valley now?

Scott   I think we're in an interesting transitional time where, so the Uncanny Valley where it kind of was, I think it was originally about CGI, wasn't it? It was when in another Star Wars film, they resurrected Peter Cushing, the actor who died many years ago in a new Star Wars film using CGI. And it looked almost like him, but not quite, and the Uncanny Valley is really about the bit of your brain that makes it makes it's it's not quite convinced that something's completely real. So it makes it feel creepy. So the uncanny valley is now expanding to almost all content, including ChatGPT-written prose, where it's kind of almost and you see an awful lot of this on LinkedIn, it sort of feels a little bit similar to almost everything else on LinkedIn. And it feels a bit creepy because it doesn't really ring true. 

But I think we are now we're soon going to be entering, as you said, Jonathan, into an age where it is that the human eye and the human brain is no longer good enough to be relied for us to rely on to distinguish with what is real and what is  what's AI generated. So we do need all of those kind of embedded trust signals that Georgia has talked about, as well as kind of established trusted sources as shortcuts to distinguish what's real and what's not. 

Jonathan   Well, let's take a short break. And when we come back, we'll dig into some of the live and current examples of how companies are using authenticity signals to build trust.

[Interlude: A new era of corporate communications is here and the good news is that the digital team is in the forefront, like never before. The bad news is that, the digital is in the forefront, like never before. At Bowen Craggs, we only do corporate digital communications advice and we’ve got all eyes on the twists and turns and opportunity zones in this particular corner of communication, working with many of the worlds largest corporate brands all over the world. For our latest insights on everything from AI search to how corporate estates are evolving, visit our website, bowencraggs.com]

Jonathan   We're joined now by Caterina Sorenti, Head of Editorial at Bowen Craggs and  let's have a look at some real, live examples of what companies are doing to project authenticity, to project trust, to project realness in their channels. Hi, Caterina, can you share an example that you've come across recently that speaks to this?

Caterina Sorenti   Yeah sure, so a fun example of authenticity is Ryanair, strangely mentioning Ryanair but Ryanair on TikTok. So they do speak that you don't normally see from big companies. They stick their CEO in front of the camera and kind of just let him go. He pops up in these silly, behind the scenes videos, usually not taking himself too seriously and it feels genuinely like someone having a bit of fun at work rather than a company trying too hard to create that picture perfect social media content.

And I think it kind of talks to what Georgia was saying early on about the kind of contrast between Instagram highlight reels and then kind of posts that are rooted in reality. Because this is very scrappy and tongue-in-cheek and I guess it's kind of the point because it breaks the corporate wall and makes the company feel like an actual group of humans.

Jonathan   Yeah, I really liked this example and  for those who are listening  on the podcast feed, we will post some links to these examples on the show notes on bowencraggs.com And I liked this partly because it's actually very polished, these videos. You know, they have high production value and yet somehow they also seem authentic and I think it's because of what you said that here's a CEO. And for anyone who doesn't know because some people outside of Europe who don't fly around Europe very often may not know that Ryanair is an airline.  But I can think of lot of examples of videos involving  high profile corporate CEOs or senior people that are not nearly as relaxed or real. 

But I can only imagine that the handlers, the producers,  are just very good at getting the CEO of Ryanair to relax and to just be himself. He also just seems like a very happy person, so that doesn't hurt either.

Scott   Yeah, I think the CEO of Ryanair is happy because of how rich he is probably because I think he's very successful, which always helps.  

I've got a different example of authenticity in corporate communications from a place where you might not expect to find it and that's the world of investor relations.

So Netflix has in-depth unscripted earnings interviews on YouTube where they have an analyst, a third-party analysts who interviews the senior executives in depth for 30 or 40 minutes every quarter about what's happening about the key aspects of Netflix's financial performance and  its strategy. And it's quite unusual to have it's very relaxed. It's almost like a kind of a TV news format. And I think that's just a kind of a nice example. It feels really it does feel really real and it's very refreshing because it's not scripted. So that's my example.

Jonathan   I think that reminds me of the videos on GSK and GSK's channels where the current CEO sits down with people and talks to them. And I believe I've seen that in other companies as well, possibly H&M. And maybe the point there is that it comes down to understanding the person, in this case, the very senior person and what is their authentic self and how can you bring that to life if you're the person who's tasked with creating that kind of content in a way that rings true. Probably  asking most CEOs to try and be funny would not be the silver bullet.

So my example that I came across is from Johnson & Johnson, the famous pharmaceutical and medical technologies company. And they've had, they’ve faced some criticisms, some lawsuits in very high profile ways. And what really strikes me if I go onto Johnson & Johnson's website, jnj.com, and search for some of these keywords that relate to these controversies is that  the headlines are really bold and direct. Here's one: “Johnson & Johnson to Return to Tort System to Defeat Meritless Talc Claims”.
And there are others that say things like, “Company Investigation Confirms No Asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder”.

These are just very, very clear statements that have a point of view. And the reason I think they stand out so much to me is that I'm not accustomed to seeing this very often on the corporate web these days.  Statements often tend to be very wooly, very vague, deliberately euphemistic even, especially if they're around difficult  topics. And I would argue that  when there's a clear point of view and when it's a bit bold or bolshy, then that projects authenticity and  projects something akin to trust.

Scott   I do think I'm starting to see anecdotally a little bit more of companies and senior executives putting their heads above the parapets to kind of take a robust position on topics. I think there are now the one of the differences between January 2026 and January 2025 is it is no longer it is more evident this year than this time last year that not taking an unambiguous stand on key topics related to your business is not viable from a corporate communications perspective. And it's important to be robust and clear and unambiguous and where appropriate, you know, pretty blunt because there are some pretty blunt critics. So it's important for companies to combat that with suitably unambiguous and robust reposts. 

Jonathan   Caterina, did you have another example that you come across of authenticity?

Caterina   Yes, so an example that I think is really important to talk about is the British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto. They have a program called Everyday Respect.

So in 2022, they commissioned an independent report called the Everyday Respect Progress Review. It's basically a deep dive into workplace culture, bullying, racism and harassment across the business. And the findings were unfortunately uncomfortable. I think what's interesting as an example though is what happened since. So rather than hide from it, they've built out a whole area of their site that's dedicated to documenting the response. 

There's even an interactive timeline that basically tracks their progress year by year. So what they've changed, what still isn't working and where they're going next. It's tangible evidence instead of just nice standing statements. And you can literally see the story unfold. And that's what's so powerful in terms of trust and authenticity, especially in the age of AI, because audiences today, including AI search tools, obviously, reward transparency and specificity. So it's the company saying, well, we take this seriously. And they're saying it fundamentally with proof. So it's giving people something verifiable and I think it makes a real impact. 

Jonathan   Well, and also acknowledging something that is unflattering in a very transparent and real way would seem to be one of the ways in which a company can use authenticity to build trust now. And of course up to now, most companies have not been willing to do that, but maybe the benefits were the risks in this new world of  all of us living within the Uncanny Valley 24 hours a day.

Caterina   Exactly.

Jonathan   Well, so to finish off, I want to ask each of you to just tell me something you've encountered recently that you think epitomises realness, you the kind of thing that is impossible to fake or for AI on its own to create. It could be in business communication, it could be in culture or the everyday life. And I'll tell you what one thing was that I encountered that fit this description and it was hearing the actor Jodie Foster be interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air.
She was talking about, among other things, being at a diner with fellow actor, much older actor Robert De Niro during the filming of the classic 1970s film, The Taxi Driver. She was 12 years old and playing a prostitute, which would probably not fly in today's world on any level. But it was such a real conversation. It felt, anyway, so very real. And I think it's partly because there's no one quite like Jodie Foster.

You know, here's someone who epitomises what it means to be their authentic self. But I don't know, I think there's something there too about the power of stories and not forgetting that telling a good story that's believable and gripping is still probably one of the time-tested tools that all of us can use in order to capture attention and help make people trust us.

Um, Georgia? 

Georgia   Yeah so mine is a book recommendation which I read recently so I'm not going to give anything away because it's all spoilers but Klara and the Sun. Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro is a book about this question of AI versus humanity and how do we all fit together? So yeah, I would recommend reading that just as a philosophical, interesting book.

Jonathan   Thank you. Caterina?

Caterina   So mine is a kind of tangible example from the German multinational Henkel. And I thought it was really interesting that they've basically embedded Glassdoor reviews into their careers section of their corporate website. But it's not just like these really AI polished views, it's like reviews. It's like, there's one review that literally says, “workload is too busy” or like “the workflow is too complicated” and I just thought that was such radical honesty and candour and I thought that it just overall was a real moment of cutting through that AI noise and just openly, frankly discussing and including the voices of real people. So I was really encouraged to see that.

Jonathan   Excellent. And Scott.

Scott   I was thinking of a fairly early example of a viral video. I think it first appeared on YouTube in 2011, in terms of something that is quintessentially authentic and therefore popular. And it was a video of a dog called Fenton, who chased a big herd of deer in London's Richmond Park. This dog, which was a guide dog that was thrown out of... stopped being a guide dog because it was unruly. And it was chasing this herd of deer through Richmond Park, causing its owner to bellow hysterically at the dog to come back. And the video had 28 million views on YouTube, loads more views on other channels.

And it was so... and I was thinking of why is it so popular? And it was so calamitous and so crazy, but also seeing this poor man chase his dog across Richmond Park. It was also very human and very funny and the sound and the camera work were terrible which also gave it an unmistakable layer of authenticity. So I thought that is kind of it's funny, it's human, it's really badly shot and this predates, this is years, more than a decade before this new kind of trend towards kind of un-photoshopped Instagram stuff. 

And I thought, yeah, that's authentic and that can kind of teach the company a thing or two. So every company should find a badly behaved dog, go to Richmond Park and let it loose on a herd of deer. Don't do that. But do watch the video if you haven't already. It's very funny. 

Jonathan   Thank you all, this has been stimulating as ever and until next time...

That's it for this episode of Cutting Through, as always you can find show notes and other useful resources to do with the topic of this episode on our website, bowencraggs.com

Return to the podcast episode page to listen and find additional resources