Global Risk Advisory Council adds first advisory, names AI top brand risk

First advisory since 2025 index launch urges business leaders to act

The Global Risk Advisory Council’s quarterly Reputation Risk Index, released Tuesday, found that misuse of artificial intelligence is the top threat to companies’ reputations, based on a survey of more than 150 public affairs leaders.

In a first for the index, the council attached an advisory urging business leaders to take “immediate and decisive action to mitigate potential long-term brand damage” from AI use, saying the technology has “become a clear and present danger to public confidence for many corporations.”

The survey of former heads of state, government ministers and senior executives from more than 20 countries across five continents — invited to participate after establishing their credentials in responding to crises — found AI misuse ranked ahead of actions or accusations of putting children at risk of mental, emotional or physical harm and of infringing on individuals’ sensitive information.

“As AI is rapidly deployed for productivity gains, we have also seen diminishing public trust in the technology, elevating the need for businesses to take measures to protect their brands,” council chair Isabel Casillas Guzman said in a statement. “In this environment, AI use or overuse can quickly damage a company’s standing with customers, investors, or other key stakeholders, making it essential for companies to deploy preventive tactics now.”

Respondents described AI as offering promise for “organizational efficiency” while “accelerating safety and data concerns, hacks, fraud, straining privacy protections, upending the workforce, and dragging companies into court as lawsuits increasingly link AI products to real-world harm.”

Unethical or illegal behavior used to gain a strategic advantage or profit, and poor strategic or operational decisions resulting in reduced financial or public standing, rounded out the top five reputational risks in the new index.

The council acknowledged that AI misuse has ranked among its top concerns since the survey’s first edition in April 2025. What the index described as new was its decision to attach an advisory to the latest edition.

The July edition had identified supply chain issues, divisive political stances and other factors that the index associated with what it called “the war the Trump’s administration started in Iran alongside Israel” as the leading reputational risk to companies. Those surveyed indicated that those anxieties had eased as the conflict dragged on, and perhaps despite it remaining unresolved since its launch in February.

“The geopolitical shock … hasn’t gone away, but its first, sharpest reputational blow has faded, and the conflict has slipped out of the top tier [of concerns] even as it grinds on,” Guzman said in a “message from the chair” included in the index.

Guzman put out her message two days after the Trump administration named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as its new AI czar. In a social media post, Trump said Clayton would oversee an entity coordinating “the federal government’s engagement with consumers, public interest groups, religious organizations, critical infrastructure providers, and” AI tech companies. Clayton had previously told federal lawmakers that AI was a “gamechanger” but also posed “a threat.”

The findings also came on the heels of perhaps more dire warnings from leading tech figures that AI in the wrong hands could precipitate existential threats on a mass scale such as nuclear war or destruction by bioweaponry.

The index is published by the Global Risk Advisory Council, which was created by the Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm Global Situation Room.