AI companies in 2025–2026 face a similar trust problem to crypto companies after 2021–2023. An AI communications crisis occurs when companies lose trust because they can’t explain what happened, who is responsible, and how the risk is being managed. Fast adoption, unclear rules, insufficient public explanations, and high-profile incidents are already turning into a sector-wide issue.
Why AI Communications Became a Trust Issue
In 2021–2023, a chain of events shook public confidence in the crypto industry. Exchange collapses, regulatory actions, and high-profile fraud cases, most notably the FTX bankruptcy in November 2022, turned the sector into a symbol of broken trust.
The technology was well-known, but the way companies communicated, or failed to communicate, determined how the public understood what had happened and who was responsible.
Fast forward to 2025–2026, and the AI industry is showing signs of rapid adoption, still-developing regulation, and a series of high-profile incidents. Some of the notable ones include OpenAI’s 2023 board crisis and Google Gemini’s image generation controversy in 2024. After these incidents, the public started to ask questions that it had asked crypto companies. As it turned out, AI companies were also unprepared to answer.
The thing is that public trust can be lost faster than product teams, legal teams, or founders expect. And when it is, companies that haven’t built communication systems in advance take the most damage.
How Did the Crypto Industry Lose the Public’s Trust?
In 2021, the crypto industry was nearly at the peak of its development. The technology was new and interesting, the communities were active, and usage was growing.
New projects were launching constantly, token markets were expanding rapidly, and valuations were climbing. To many people inside the industry, it was like confirmation that the whole thing was working. Founders, platform builders, and early visionaries were genuinely convinced that success was inevitable. This conviction, in many cases, became a blind spot.
The risks were larger than most of them acknowledged, while crisis communication was not a priority. There were no established frameworks for how to respond during a crisis, no prepared spokespeople, no tested playbooks. When the consequences appeared, the industry had almost nothing in place to manage them.
FTX had spent years building a public image around safety, legitimacy, and responsible growth. When it collapsed in November 2022 under allegations, everything the company had publicly stood for was questioned overnight. In 2026, a federal appeals court upheld Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction. This means people still remember that period, find it the most shocking, and trust-eroding.
This case shows what happens when an industry develops faster than its ability to explain itself. Silence, defensive statements, and technical language made the uncertainty feel worse for people.
What Trust Problems Is the AI Industry Facing Now?
The problems the AI industry is facing in 2025–2026 have three distinct dimensions, which potentially take them closer to the stress the crypto industry has been through.
Opacity without accountability
AI products are being released nearly every day, while people often cannot keep up with what the technology can and cannot do.
In 2024, Google launched image generation on Gemini without properly testing it or explaining its limitations to users. When it generated historically inaccurate images, the backlash caused serious reputational damage to Google. People started to wonder whether a company of this size tests its models at all, whether it understands its own risks, and who is actually responsible in such situations.
Regulation is squeezing AI in a vise
As usually happens with rapidly evolving technology, AI is a growing concern for regulators across markets. In Europe, the EU AI Act entered into force on 1 August 2024 and will become fully applicable on 2 August 2026, which will require AI companies to disclose how they classify their products, what risk controls exist, and how they document compliance. This naturally draws the attention of journalists, enterprise buyers, and the broader public. Addressing regulatory scrutiny is now a key priority, especially for communications teams.
One incident affects the whole sector
Perhaps the most important parallel with crypto is the collective nature of the trust problem. Public concern about AI is today directed at the entire industry. A CBS News poll from May 2026 found that only 32% of Americans trust that government will ensure appropriate AI usage. A 2025 Gartner survey found that 53% of consumers distrust AI-generated search results. Meanwhile, a separate global survey by Baringo found that 70% of people are uncomfortable with AI-generated media.
These numbers reflect a growing loss of confidence in this technology. As a result, every public incident, wherever it happens, occurs in an environment that is already prone to distrust.
What AI Companies Can Learn From Crypto’s Crisis Communications
Not every crypto company handled the crisis badly. Some adapted, and the ones that did started treating communication as part of how they operated.
Coinbase shifted its public positioning toward policy engagement and compliance-led messaging, making regulatory clarity a part of its brand rather than a legal burden to manage quietly. Chainalysis, in turn, built authority by making blockchain data publicly useful, providing governments, journalists, and institutions with the analysis they needed to understand crypto crime and compliance. Both companies found that explaining the industry was more effective in the long run.
The table below maps the communication tactics that left crypto companies exposed, against what AI companies can do differently, and, more importantly, earlier.
What crypto companies did too late | What AI companies should do now |
| Created crisis teams after public damage | Build crisis systems before a major incident |
| Explained technology first | Explain user impact, risk, and accountability first |
| Treated regulation as a legal-only topic | Make regulation part of public communication |
| Let founders speak without enough preparation | Train spokespeople for hostile and technical questions |
| Managed legal, product, and comms separately | Align legal, product, policy, and communications teams |
Major research papers also back up these principles, such as Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer for the technology sector. It identifies transparency, governance, responsibility, and demonstrated public value among the parameters that audiences use to decide whether a company deserves their trust.
AI Communications Crisis Framework for Companies in 2026
Knowing that a crisis could happen is not the same as being ready for one. Most companies, whether in crypto or in AI, understand the risk in theory but don’t build the systems that allow them to respond effectively during crises.
At Drofa Comms, to address risks, we use our tailored crisis readiness framework developed through work with fintech and crypto clients. Because the public pressure in AI is similar, the same playbook doesn’t lose its relevance.
From our experience, strong crisis preparedness usually includes: early monitoring, scenario planning, an assigned response team, trained spokespeople, internal documentation, and leadership involvement. If these systems are missing, even a small issue can quickly become a public trust problem.
For AI companies, this is especially important because reputational pressure can come from many directions at once. They include model mistakes, data concerns, regulatory attention, safety criticism, executive statements, or public backlash against infrastructure and energy use.
AI Companies Still Have Time to Prepare
At Drofa Comms, we believe the AI industry is inevitably following the path of the crypto industry. It means it undergoes rapid growth, public enthusiasm, then regulatory pressure, and rising public scepticism.
The difference, for now, is timing. AI companies still have the opportunity to build communications infrastructure before a major reputational crisis forces the issue.
If your AI company is uncertain about its preparedness for regulatory scrutiny, a sudden trust issue, or a high-profile incident, Drofa Comms can help you assess your crisis readiness and build a communications strategy that works before it is tested.
FAQ
What is an AI communications crisis?
An AI communications crisis occurs when an AI company loses public trust because of a product incident, governance failure, regulatory action, or public backlash that moves faster than the company’s ability to respond. In 2025–2026, the risk is higher than before, driven by high-profile model failures, leadership controversies, and the growing regulatory pressure created by the EU AI Act.
What did the crypto trust crisis teach AI companies about PR?
The collapse of public confidence in crypto after 2021 showed that silence, defensive responses, and technical language make reputational damage worse, not better. The companies that recovered, including Coinbase and Chainalysis, did so by shifting to proactive public education, compliance-led messaging, and consistent engagement with regulators and media. AI companies can take the same approach, with the advantage of being able to act before a major incident forces their hand.
How should AI companies prepare for a communications crisis?
AI companies should build crisis readiness before any public incident occurs. This includes monitoring media and regulatory signals, preparing response scenarios for likely risks, and deciding in advance who approves public statements and who can speak on behalf of the company. The strongest teams also align legal, product, policy, and communications before pressure appears, so decisions do not have to be made from zero during a crisis.
What is the Drofa Comms Crisis Readiness Tool?
The Drofa Comms Crisis Readiness Tool is a structured self-assessment tool that helps companies understand how prepared they are for reputational pressure. It looks at key areas such as monitoring, scenario planning, spokesperson readiness, internal coordination, documentation, and leadership involvement. The tool helps teams identify weak points before a public issue becomes harder to manage.
