STEERus Rolls Out Free Tool and Webinar on How AI Describes Small Businesses to Customers

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STEERus Inc. has launched a free online assessment called the Digital Signal Check, intended to enable business owners to see the difference between their own company description and how AI systems summarize it for potential customers. The River Vale, New Jersey-based company is pairing the tool’s release with a free webinar on October 23.

The launch builds on the work of STEERus founder Loralyn Mears, PhD, a scientist and leadership educator who wrote the book MISINTERPRETED: The Hidden Risk Making Brands & Leaders Invisible in the Age of AI. Mears coined the term Misinterpretation Risk to describe what she argues is a growing gap between what a business says about itself and what AI systems conclude about it after pulling from websites, reviews, listings, social media and news coverage scattered across the internet.

The concern, according to the announcement, is that AI search tools don’t return lists of links the way traditional search engines do. They synthesize scattered information into a single summary or recommendation. If a company has changed its services, pivoted its market, or simply accumulated outdated listings over the years, those older signals don’t disappear on their own, and they can shape what an AI tool tells a customer without the business ever knowing it happened. "Businesses have been taught to ask, ‘Can people find me?’" Mears said in the announcement. "The more important question now may be, ‘When AI finds me, does it understand me correctly?’"

The free webinar, titled "Is AI Search Making Your Business Invisible? 5 Things Every Business Owner Needs to Do Now," runs October 23 from 2 to 3 p.m. ET and is open to business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals. Mears is set to walk through how AI-driven discovery differs from conventional search and outline five steps businesses can take on their own to clean up conflicting digital information. Mears also hosts the Small Biz Stories podcast, now in its sixth season.

STEERus isn’t alone in targeting this concern; other companies have recently introduced similar tools aimed at showing businesses how AI assistants represent their brands, suggesting the question of AI-driven misrepresentation is becoming a broader small-business concern rather than a niche one. Studio CarryOnHarry will be watching whether tools like this one gain real traction with small business owners or end up as a passing feature of the current AI-search moment.

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