The Secret of Brands Chosen by AI: AEO=By Kim Yong-seok and Lee Seung-min, Cheoeum Books.
“We have entered an era in which AI’s choice becomes the consumer’s choice.” (p. 48)
A branding specialist and an AI specialist argue that the AI era will intensify a winner-take-all market, with brands selected in AI-generated answers rising to the top. They say strategies centered on SEO, or search engine optimization, are rapidly shifting to AEO, or answer engine optimization. Where ranking first on a search results page once mattered most, they write that consumers increasingly accept AI’s highly personalized “right answer” as presented — and that companies that stick to older marketing playbooks risk turning their websites into deserted islands.
The book’s focus is captured in its subtitle: a marketing blueprint for optimizing answers so that AI recommends you. Beyond forecasting how AI will reshape marketing, the authors lay out practical steps in plain language. They stress the goal of becoming “the one brand AI chooses first,” and offer survival tactics aimed at standing out to AI systems.
The authors analyze the types of material AI commonly draws on to produce answers, including YouTube, video captions and NamuWiki. They also note that major platforms such as Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity favor different kinds of content, and they outline exposure strategies tailored to each.
The book includes hands-on guidance, including: “You must become a perfect answer for people with needs in a specific context,” “It favors raw, unfiltered voices in communities and reviews,” and “If you aren’t sharply differentiated, you won’t even get the chance to pass AI’s filtering and reach customers.”
Written for accessibility, it explains technical terms briefly but concretely and uses a fictional commerce agent, “KapGPT,” to show at a glance how AI arrives at answers. A section on “three rules of writing that captivates both humans and AI” aims to distill the essentials.
“Information should be provided in a structure that is easy for AI to learn. A vague adjective like ‘our product is good’ is meaningless to AI. Instead, you should connect specific specs and the problem they solve in a clear relationship — for example: ‘Our running shoes have a 0.8-centimeter difference between heel and forefoot height and ample forefoot space, helping runners with wide feet and forefoot pressure prevent plantar fasciitis.’ AI prefers this problem-solution structure, and it is much easier to match to users’ questions.” (p. 95)
Ahn, a professor in the Department of Film, TV and Multimedia at Sungkyunkwan University, examines anxiety from a humanistic perspective after years of studying the subject. He argues that anxiety is not simply a negative emotion, but one that challenges the self and helps a person move beyond an identity formed within outdated knowledge systems to become a new subject. He writes that the anxiety people feel as they confront the waves of the AI era can be understood as a paradoxical mechanism of hope that reveals new possibilities for the self.
Drawing on the works and theories of philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Jacques Lacan, Ahn looks at the modern psyche in depth. He reframes anxiety not as something to eliminate, but as a time for creative decision — a “kairos.”
Why Walk Japan=By Lim Byeong-sik, Dione.
Lim, a former journalist, spent two years walking sites tied to Japan’s modern history from Ibusuki in the far south to Wakkanai in the far north. Along the way, he writes, he encountered multiple faces of Japan at once: a Japan that distorts history, a Japan that stays silent about war crimes, a Japan that reflects on wrongdoing, and a Japan that moves to correct past errors. Avoiding a simple perpetrator-victim frame, he describes what he saw by walking each place and meeting a range of people, portraying the complexity of Japanese society.
The book visits places marked by heavy history, including Fukuoka, where the tragic deaths of Yun Dong-ju and Song Mong-gyu remain; the ruins of Hizen Nagoya Castle, described as a starting point of Korea’s invasion; and Ibusuki and Chiran, where traces of the kamikaze suicide units remain. Through the life of Fuse Tatsuji, a Japanese lawyer who defended Koreans, Lim raises questions about responsibility and reconciliation.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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