Across industries, companies are spending hundreds of millions to lock in first-party data assets through mergers, acquisitions, and platform capture — treating data as the "new oil."

But NVIDIA's Jensen Huang has noted that AI technology's cost drops 100,000 times every ten years, and that within a decade, AI-generated synthetic data will dwarf human-generated data.

Joanne Z. Tan points out here that the companies acquiring today's data at premium prices are, in many cases, paying real diamond prices for what will soon be worth far less.

Scholars Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry, in their book "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech", frame this extraction as a power imbalance in which personal data becomes raw material for corporate profit — without the knowledge or consent of the people generating it. During colonialism, at least, those dispossessed knew what was being taken. Today, most consumers have no way of knowing.

AI search systems are beginning to synthesize trust indicators — customer reviews, media sentiment, authoritative publications, and executive reputation — into signals that may soon function as "trust scores" determining brand visibility and recommendation outcomes.

Authentic authority, built through consistent thought leadership, is now the currency AI systems trust most.

Joanne Z. Tan illustrates with a case study of The Ivy Group to show how a brand with few Google reviews, built on genuine thought leadership, was ranked #1 by ChatGPT among fierce competitors — proof that AI is already outsmarting unethical data players.

The most valuable data asset any company can hold is not what it seized — it is the trust that causes customers to willingly share their data, advocate for the brand, and create the authentic content ecosystem that AI systems reward.

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Joanne Z. Tan is the Founder and CEO of 10 Plus Brand, Inc. and the creator of AIXD.world — AI Experience Design. A globally recognized brand strategist, thought leadership coach, and startup mentor based in Silicon Valley, Joanne works with founders, CEOs, and C-suite executives to build brands that lead markets, command premium positioning, and endure. She is known for this principle: "User experience is brand experience, and brand experience determines enterprise destiny."

© Joanne Z. Tan, 2026. All rights reserved.