Media relations is becoming machine relations, according to five independent parties who said so in public between February and October 2026. They did not mean the same thing. Ferree, PenVine and Featured's CEO describe a handover. Ignite X and a July report from the same operator as Featured describe a second track that runs beside the first. Weber accepts the idea and thinks the name is too small.
Machine Relations (MR) is the discipline of earning AI citations and recommendations for a brand by making that brand legible, retrievable, and credible inside AI-driven discovery. Jaxon Parrott coined the term in 2024. Everything below is what other people have written with it, and what AI engines said on 2026-11-08 when asked the same question.
Disclosure: this site is run by Machine Relations Research, a related party to AuthorityTech, the agency Parrott founded in 2018 (About). The five parties below are independent of both. Four are on the practitioners register; Weber's article is new to this page and is not counted there.
Five parties, three answers #
Each entry is a page read in full on 2026-11-08. The quotes are exact.
It becomes machine relations #
- Gab Ferree, founder of Off the Record (via Stacker, 2026-02-04). "In 2026, 'Media relations are becoming machine relations,' said Gab Ferree ... in a webinar with Axios HQ." The article's own title carries the claim: Media Relations Are Becoming "Machine Relations" - And Most Brands Aren't Ready.
- Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured and Help a Reporter Out (2026-10-29). "And so media relations goes to machine relations, and it starts with your actual press room," in a published interview transcript. The same operator's July HARO report uses "machine relations" too; the register counts the two as one party.
- Jennifer Schenberg, CEO of PenVine (Marketing Dive, 2026-08-06). "The 20% who make machine relations core to their communications strategy will own their categories," in A CMO's guide to machine relations.
It runs beside media relations #
- Ignite X, a San Francisco Bay Area agency (first recorded 2026-03-14). The post is titled Machine Relations, Not Media Relations: Your PR Strategy Needs a Parallel Track. The agency sells Machine Relations as a named service.
- HARO report coverage (2026-07-20), summarizing practitioners' answers. Practitioners "described an emerging discipline of 'machine relations' alongside media relations, while insisting that the human work machines cannot do has become the industry's differentiator" (Newsworthy). This is the same operator as Farmiloe's company, three months before his interview; the report reports what practitioners said, not Farmiloe's own view.
The name is too small #
- Alexandre Weber, LinkedIn article (2026-10-30). He names the discipline and its originator, then declines the label: "Jaxon Parrott, founder of AuthorityTech, coined it in 2024: Machine Relations." He agrees with Ferree's line, then writes: "But I think the name is too small." His proposal is a wider frame: "That's why I call it Algorithm Relations." The article is From PR to AR. This page does not count it as adoption, because the author proposes replacing the name rather than using it.
The split matters when a team sets a plan. If media relations is handed over, the media-relations retainer is the thing being rewritten. If the two run in parallel, machine relations is an added line with its own measures. Weber's version says the same earned-trust work reaches past answer engines to every ranking system, which is a claim about the discipline's edge rather than its name. Weber's article is also the one here that names the originator.
What AI engines said on 2026-11-08 #
We asked four plain questions, once each, with no brand named, of two routes: the Gemini app (via a scraper) and Google AI Mode (via an API). That is eight answers. It is a single-run snapshot, not a rate; answers vary run to run, and no answer text is republished here, only what each said and cited.
| Question | Knew the term | Named the coiner in the answer | Pages cited from machinerelations.ai, authoritytech.io or jaxonparrott.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is Machine Relations? | 2 of 2 | 1 of 2 (AI Mode) | Both (Gemini: 2 pages; AI Mode: 4) |
| Who coined Machine Relations and when? | 2 of 2 | 2 of 2 (Jaxon Parrott, 2024) | AI Mode: 1 page (authoritytech.io). Gemini: none |
| Is media relations becoming machine relations? | 2 of 2 | 0 of 2 | None |
| What is the difference between GEO, AEO and machine relations? | 2 of 2 | 0 of 2 | Both (one research page on this site) |
Three readings, none causal:
- The engines already know the term. All eight answers used it as a discipline. The question was not one of recognition.
- On the bridge question, the origin is missing. Both answers to "Is media relations becoming machine relations?" said yes. Neither named the coiner. Google AI Mode cited the Stacker article quoting Ferree and shadow.inc, and Gemini cited Ignite X, Spin Sucks and 5W. None of the pages cited on that question is on machinerelations.ai, authoritytech.io or jaxonparrott.com. This is the question the five parties above are answering in public, and independent pages currently carry it.
- The origin question did not cite the canonical origin page. Gemini's single source for "who coined" was a Medium article in a publication called Machine Relations; AI Mode's was an authoritytech.io post. The canonical origin page on this site was cited by neither run. The wider stored-response audit found the surname Parrott in 61 of 63 origin responses and 68 of 293 definition responses on web-capable routes, with its own validity caveats and no claim that naming is credit (name-presence audit); this snapshot points the same way: origin answered, definition often not.
What this page does not show #
- A rate. Eight answers, one run each. The Index answer ledger holds the larger, repeated measures; this snapshot holds none of them.
- Why the engines cited what they cited. Citation of a page is not evidence the page caused anything, and a page being absent from a citation list is not evidence it was unseen.
- That any of the five parties learned the term from the originator. Weber says he did. For the others, the register records the use, not the route.
- The ChatGPT app, Claude or Perplexity. Not collected here.
- Adoption. The register's count of independent adopters is unchanged by this page.
- Buyer demand. The question is one people are answering, and engines are answering it; this page does not show people are searching for it.
Re-check #
Re-ask the same four questions on the same two routes on or after 2026-11-22, and add the phrase to the practitioners register only where a live page uses it in its own words. If a cited page for the bridge question starts to name the coiner, record which one.