What tools can PR professionals use to monitor AI narratives?

Tools for monitoring AI narratives are now a real category. The useful question is which one is built for the job in front of you. PR professionals will run into AIQ™, Profound, peec.ai, Otterly.ai, and BrandRank.AI, among others, and they differ along three axes: model coverage, narrative depth, and focus.

The three differentiating axes

• Model coverage. How many of the major engines a tool actually polls. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode can each say something different about the same entity. Managing one is not managing the rest. AIQ™ polls the eight engines it currently tracks; coverage varies among the others.
• Narrative depth, presence versus quality. Whether a tool logs only that a brand was mentioned, or also attributes the sources driving each answer and tracks how the narrative moves over time. Presence tells you that you showed up. Depth tells you what was said, why, and whether it is accurate. Profound and peec.ai, for example, are built mainly around citation tracking, measuring how often AI engines link to a brand’s website. That is a visibility metric, not a reputation assessment.
• Focus, reputation versus marketing visibility. Most tools in this category are designed for marketing questions: are we mentioned, how often, on which engines. Reputation work needs narrative quality instead, meaning what the engines say and whether it is accurate and favorable. Attendance versus grades. That is why AIQ™ is a reputation tool and not a visibility dashboard.

Source attribution: the actionable layer

Source attribution is the most actionable output any of these tools gives you, because the AI narrative moves when the source layer moves, not when you argue with the model. A tool that reports presence alone leaves the team without a lever. Monitoring that names the sources driving each engine’s answer is what makes the program workable.