AI systems now shape buying decisions before a buyer ever contacts the seller. Fifty-one percent of B2B software buyers now begin research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google (G2, 2026), and 51 percent of U.S. consumers used an AI tool to help them shop in the past month (NielsenIQ, September 2026). In this article, Charles Smitherman, CEO of the Association of Professional Rental Organizations (APRO), argues that associations and events are next, because the members, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors they depend on already buy this way everywhere else, and generative engine optimization (GEO) takes months to show results.

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey reframes the Trojan Horse as a stroke of genius whose consequences could not be called back. I have not been able to stop seeing the parallel to what we are building with AI and Generative Engine Optimization.

Ask a language model a question it cannot answer, and watch what it does. It answers anyway — fluently, completely, with the grammar of certainty. In Unverified, I let the machine testify about what it's actually doing when it hands you that answer. What it said, I haven't been able to shake.

We now ask AI a question and accept the answer without checking the source. Charles Smitherman on what happens to truth when verification quietly disappears—and his new book, Unverified.