Max: ChatGPT crossed one billion global monthly active users in June — the fastest any app has reached that milestone — and Google's AI Mode has been answering questions in Bahasa Indonesia since September, making it the first non-English deployment of that product.
Anita: So the scale is striking, but what does it actually change for a company operating in Indonesia or across ASEAN?
Max: It changes where reputation forms. Independent research now shows that when an AI summary appears, users click through to a website roughly half as often as when it does not. And in Google's AI Mode specifically, Semrush measured a 93 percent zero-click rate across 69 million sessions. Rankings still exist — visibility has moved inside the answer.
Anita: That is a structural shift, not a trend. If buyers are forming views inside the AI answer and never reaching the website, what does that mean for who gets onto a buyer's shortlist?
Max: Bain finds that 85 percent of B2B buyers purchase from their day-one list — the vendors they had already considered before they started searching. The kill path is no longer a lost ranking. It is never being considered at all. And Bahasa-language AI search is only ten months old, so the Indonesian data does not exist yet — but the commercial logic already applies to this market's counterparties.
Anita: Give me a concrete example of where that logic bites hardest right now.
Max: The EU Deforestation Regulation. Large and medium operators face enforcement on 30 December 2026. A European cocoa buyer or trade financier forming a view of Indonesian suppliers ahead of that deadline is exactly the person whose day-one list now forms inside an AI answer — not on an exporter's website. And AI assistants draw disproportionately on earned media and independent sources: the satellite investigations, NGO reports, news coverage a company does not control. For Indonesian agribusiness, the May reporting of more than 31,000 hectares cleared for palm oil in 2025, and the traceability gaps behind it, is precisely the material an assistant will synthesise when a buyer asks which suppliers are deforestation-free.
Anita: So the exposure sits with the buyer's screen. But there is also the question of accuracy — AI systems produce errors and fabrications. How exposed is Indonesia to that problem specifically?
Max: Significantly. Deepfake incidents in Indonesia surged 1,550 percent year on year around the 2024 election cycle. In January, Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block Grok, the xAI chatbot, over its misuse to generate nonconsensual imagery. Communications Minister Meutya Hafid described nonconsensual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights and citizen safety. A jurisdiction willing to switch off an AI platform is a jurisdiction that will regulate what AI says — including about companies.
Anita: And the regulatory calendar compounds this. There is movement on the domestic side too, not just from Brussels.
Max: The government has designated two Presidential Regulations — the National AI Roadmap 2026 to 2030, and AI ethics and safety — as priorities for this year. Mandatory labeling of AI-generated content is prepared as the first derivative regulation, with Komdigi targeting issuance within 2026. Layer on EUDR enforcement, Indonesia's scheduled GSP graduation on 31 December 2026, and IEU-CEPA ratification racing to enter into force by 1 January 2027 — European counterparties will be re-papering Indonesian supplier relationships through the fourth quarter, asking assistants the questions your website used to answer.
Anita: So what is the concrete first move for a management team that takes this seriously? Not the long-term strategy — what do they do this quarter?
Max: The audit is specific and executable. Query the major assistants — ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode — about your company, your leadership, your compliance record, in both English and Bahasa Indonesia. Document what they say. Identify which sources the answers draw from. Wire ongoing narrative monitoring into the communications function rather than leaving it inside marketing's SEO budget. Seer Interactive finds that being cited inside an AI answer delivers 35 percent more organic clicks than not being cited — the citation, not the ranking, is now the unit of visibility.
Anita: And that audit needs a named owner, not a working group.
Max: Commission the AI visibility audit this quarter and assign it a named owner — the same discipline applied to any balance sheet asset, because that is what discoverability now is. The test we would put to any management team: if a European buyer asks an AI assistant today, in either language, whether your supply chain clears EUDR on 30 December 2026, does the answer name you, accurately, from sources you have shaped — and can your communications lead show the evidence before that deadline? Continue this conversation with us in person at the Applied AI leadership forum on Wednesday, 12 August — a breakfast session at The Summit Club, World Trade Center 1, Jakarta, with special guest Ong Hock Chuan, Managing Partner of Maverick Indonesia, presenting How AI Is Changing Your Reputation Management and Marketing. Registration is open in the subscriber portal.