New technologies are redefining the way we interact with information and construct perceptions online. According to Renan Bulgueroni, CEO of Hawkz, a company specialized in digital reputation in Brazil and Spain, the way reputations are built and perceived on the web has been undergoing a significant shift, especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, voice assistants, and increasingly intelligent search engines.
Digital reputation—once limited to what appeared on the first pages of Google—is now processed, interpreted, and delivered in real-time by conversational algorithms, directly in your living room, car, or even on your watch.
“These technologies not only shape our perception but respond to the essence of human behavior: seeking security, meaning, and clarity in relationships. If we once used Google as a modern oracle, today the oracle responds in real-time, with context and natural language,” assesses Renan Bulgueroni.
The neuroscience behind ‘Googling’
What may seem like a habit shaped by modernity is actually—according to the expert—an ancestral behavior with neuroscientific roots. The search for predictability and security, combined with the convenience of digital searches, has become an essential filter in personal and professional decisions.
Faced with high market competitiveness, users seek to make more reliable decisions, and research helps validate perceptions and avoid surprises—whether when searching for a doctor, lawyer, company, or person they want to engage with. Everyone wants to be sure they’re choosing the best option, and digital reputation serves as a confirmation tool.
“LinkedIn, for example, shows what the candidate wants to display. Google, on the other hand, shows everything: legal cases, social media activity, mentions, news articles. Searching has become an essential part of the screening process for HR departments. This behavior even extends to social situations. After meeting someone, it’s common to quickly search their name,” adds Bulgueroni.
From typing to voice commands
According to a forecast by Gartner, by 2026, the use of traditional search engines may decrease by up to 25%, being progressively replaced by AI-powered agents driven by voice assistants and chatbots.
According to Renan, this projection should be interpreted cautiously, as the real impact will depend on the pace of user adoption and the ability of major platforms to reinvent their search experiences—such as Google, which is already advancing in this direction with AI Overview, a system that provides AI-generated answers in the first search result.
The new reputation ecosystem
Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are undergoing a reinvention. Once limited, they now integrate generative AI:
– Siri is being reformulated with AI (Apple Intelligence project).
– Alexa is being integrated with more powerful LLMs, such as Claude and proprietary models.
– Google Assistant is already merging with Gemini.
This new ecosystem connects as follows:
- Voice command →
- Generative AI →
- Search engine →
- Contextualized response
This is the new workflow:
- The voice assistant receives the command (e.g., ‘Search for so-and-so’).
- It activates an AI model (GPT-4, Gemini, etc.).
- The model searches web sources (Google, Bing).
- The AI interprets and responds based on context and relevance.
After detailing this new dynamic, the CEO notes that these integrations show that to ensure a good digital reputation, it’s no longer enough to ‘rank well’ on Google. It’s necessary to manage your online presence as a strategic asset—because now it will be read and interpreted by conversational algorithms and queried by metasearch engines.
The minimal effort, the maximum reward
From a behavioral and neuroscientific standpoint, the lower the effort required to obtain information, the higher the chance the behavior will repeat—this is how humans form habits. Thus, the automatic behavior is precisely about the ease of searching for and finding information about someone.
“If before you had to go to a computer, then to a phone, now all you have to do is speak—and the answer is delivered in natural language. The image of people and companies is being read, interpreted, and distributed by robots, at scale, based on what they find (or not). Reputation is not just a reflection of who you are, but the perception algorithms have about you,” he concludes.
