The 30 People Shaping AI Visibility, GEO, and AI Perception in 2026: As Determined by 5 LLMs

AI visibility, generative engine optimization (GEO), and AI brand perception are now their own disciplines, but the field is crowded with self-styled experts and very few accountable practitioners. To separate signal from noise, I ran 1,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini and triangulated against actual published work. These are the 30 people whose names recurred most often and whose methodologies have shaped the field.