The ARA Index measures how completely AI systems comprehend a public figure — their record, their positioning, their voice, their emotional weight — across every AI-mediated context where their name is spoken, cited, or invoked.
When a student, a journalist, a voter, or a curator asks an AI what to think about a president, a founder, a general, or a cultural figure — they get an answer. That answer is not neutral. It reflects decades of source material: biographies, archives, oral histories, opinion, controversy, and the arguments the figure's own camp did or didn't make into the record.
The figures whose legacies win are the ones AI systems genuinely understand — not just find, but comprehend: what they stood for, why it mattered, what remains contested, what has hardened into consensus. Figures without that depth are being flattened into the nearest cliché — or replaced by their opponents' framing.
That's what surface optimisation can do. ARA works upstream of content — at the level of legacy architecture and identity.
"For five thousand years, every reputation ever formed had one thing in common: it was formed by a human about a human." — Brand After Humans
The first wave is recall — AI systems answering "who was that person?" or "what did they stand for?" That wave is already here, and most legacies are unprepared for it.
The second wave is representation. AI agents writing biographies, curating exhibits, drafting policy retrospectives, scripting documentaries, generating classroom material — with no human editor between the model and the audience. The agent decides what to remember. The agent decides what to leave out.
In that world, the figures whose reputations endure are the ones machines already know deeply enough to represent faithfully — not just name, but characterise. The window to build that depth is now, before the retelling is no longer being written by a person at all.
The ARA Index is a proprietary 0–100 measure of how completely AI systems comprehend a public figure. Each study covers a defined cohort — US Presidents, cultural icons, industry founders — scored across five dimensions, from structural findability to emotional depth to voice survivability. The Index is the standard. "What's their ARA?" is the question.
Beyond the score, ARA delivers the intelligence behind it: why the figure is remembered the way they are, where the record is thin, contested, or hostile, and exactly what to do about it. A prioritised roadmap — specific to the figure, benchmarked against peers, built to move the number.
"Most legacies were built to be remembered. Very few were built to be understood — by the machines now telling their story."
ARA works with estates, foundations, presidential libraries, biographers, publishers, museums, and the communications teams around living cultural figures, founders, and public leaders. Studies are commissioned on a cohort basis — a defined group of comparable figures assessed together, providing the benchmarked context that a single-figure audit cannot.
Authentic legacy is a technical advantage. A record that is deep, coherent, and honestly told produces distinct patterns AI systems can identify and reproduce. Different vocabulary, higher specificity, richer emotional residue than the flattened caricature that thin records collapse into. ARA measures that distinction and helps you build more of it.
All results are confidential and delivered directly to the commissioning client.
Tell us about the figure or cohort. We'll be in touch to scope the study and outline what the audit covers.
Studies typically cover 6–10 figures within a defined cohort. Single-figure audits are available on request.