Field Notes

What we learn from watching AI models recommend brands, written up from the category rankings and brand evals on this site.

• 0123 Sept 2026 · 9 min readHow do AI models rank brands?We asked 14 AI models from 8 labs to recommend brands in 10 categories, 1,533 times, from their training alone, and recorded every source they gave for each pick. In 9 of the 10 categories, the models don't justify their rankings with the brands' own websites. They justify them with each category's scoreboard, and nearly every category has a different one. AI consulting, which has no scoreboard, is the exception.Read the note ↗