It helps to be concrete about where this actually happens, since "AI search" can sound abstract until you see the specific surfaces involved.
Google AI Overviews sit directly inside standard Google search results, generating a written summary above the traditional links for many queries. This is arguably the highest-stakes surface right now simply because of Google's search volume. Structured, well-sourced content and clear schema markup both meaningfully affect whether you're cited here.
ChatGPT, when browsing is enabled, pulls live information from the web to answer questions, and increasingly surfaces branded product and service recommendations. Perplexity is built around this exact use case from the ground up, citing sources directly alongside its answers, which makes it one of the more transparent places to check whether you're being cited at all.
Claude and other assistants with web access work similarly, synthesizing an answer from what they can find and trust. Voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) increasingly draw on the same underlying answer-engine logic for informational queries, which means the same content foundation tends to help across voice and text alike.
Social platforms deserve a mention too. TikTok and Instagram's own search functions, and increasingly their AI-assisted discovery features, function as answer engines in their own right for a lot of younger audiences, which is part of why founder-led, platform-native content matters as much as traditional web content does now.
The common thread across every one of these surfaces: they all reward the same underlying qualities. Clear structure, credible authorship, and content that answers a specific question directly instead of working up to it. Different platforms, same foundation.