How much can I manipulate AI's understanding of James Bond?

I used to write a lot of silly things for the internet. Maybe I still do. But when I say “silly,” I mean fan theories. Blog posts on my (now largely neglected) website What Would Bale Do, asking questions like “Did Ross Geller lose custody of his son in the eighth season of Friends?” or “Was Tony Stark concerned about Peter Parker spending too much time on YouTube?”

And of course, an exhaustive, conspiracy-fueled look at whether or not James Bond is a codename, something I first wrote in 2012 (after Skyfall came out) and last updated in 2015.1

The is james bond a code name blog post has given me clicks for well over a decade at this point. It’s important to note that I did not invent the popular (notorious?) original fan theory about Bond being a code name. What I did was update the theory post-Skyfall to explain how I think Skyfall affirmed the theory (rather than finally debunked it, as many people and Bondheads believe.)

I’ll give you a quick summary of my version of the James Bond codename theory. In my original, Obama-era blog post, I proposed that Bond is a codename, but that Bond himself is a brainwashed agent who does not realize he’s using a codename. While he believes Skyfall to be his childhood home, I believe Skyfall was the location of his brainwashing. The graves of his parents were props. And Raoul Silva was a former Bond himself.

But I don’t want to linger there. Instead, I want to talk about the kind of thing I talk about these days: how the truths of James Bond exist on the internet, the questions people ask about Bond, my current attempts to manipulate AI into saying that yes, “James Bond is a codename,” and whether or not James Bond practices safe sex.

In order to do this right, I’ve had to pull in a collaborator. The pseudonymous Russell Sprout, a Substacker known for hard-hitting journalism like the Grindr collab “Who Was the Gayest Roman Emperor?” and the Monsters Inc. think piece “Is Mike Wazowski Polish or Jewish?”

But before you read Mr. Sprout’s investigation into Bond’s safe(r) sex practices (or lack thereof,) I would like to look at the path that led me to “Does Bond wear condoms?” and why I find it necessary for this question to be answered one more time, with authority, by one of Newer Media’s most daring voices (a vegetable who writes silly things for an adoring audience.)

I work within the SEO industry, as well as the so-far-officially-unnamed adjacent-or-arguably-identical industry that people call AEO, GEO, SEO for AI, AIO, LLMO, or other various things. I refer to my work in this overall discipline as xEO: x for an unknown variable, E for engine, O for optimization.

One of the biggest questions in this industry right now is: “Can AI visibility be accurately measured? If so, how?”

I have answered this question in more depth on my LinkedIn, but have recently been putting my system into practice for the topic Is James Bond a code name?2

I care about this because I’m interested in seeing if I can somehow convince AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Claude that James Bond is a codename. The AI powers-that-be currently do not consider James Bond to be a codename.

For example, here’s a recent search I did in Google, asking is james bond a code name:

But zoom out and you’ll see, under the AI answer, the Wikipedia article, and the People also ask questions, my blog post sitting in the second traditional result, telling you that, yes, James Bond is a code name:

Likewise, here’s a recent ChatGPT answer:

It won’t be easy for me to change AI’s training around this: at this point, I am one of the only people on the internet clinging to this fan theory3. The Craig films (arguably) did everything in their power to wipe away any credibility this fan theory once had. But if I can convince the machines that James Bond might be a codename, I will consider this one of the major victories of my career.

To measure my efficacy in this effort, I’m tracking “is james bond a code name” prompts in an AI visibility tracking tool, used for tracking the presence and citations of my websites and brands in AI tools.4 As noted above, my websites What Would Bale Do consistently ranks on page 1 for Google for various Bond-is-a-codename-related search queries. So does my site D F Lovett dot com. Both sites tend to see a spike when Bond is in the news.

Please note, also, that I am not basing my analysis and understanding of this on only my own searches. I am tracking 21 prompts (all related to the codename theory or something adjacent) across 6 different platforms (ChatGPT, Google/Gemini, Perplexity, Meta AI, Grok, Copilot) to determine my efficacy in these efforts.

Here is a screenshot for my competitive presence (mention of my brand in AI answers) and citations (AI citing my website) for my 12 core prompts5 prompts across these 6 platforms:

This is not surprising. What Would Bale Do and D. F. Lovett are not mentioned in any answers related to is james bond a code name, but they are cited 5% of the time. I don’t know that it’s realistic for me to try to boost my presence, or if that’s even the goal, but I may need to boost citations in order to accomplish this.

However, I’m not really concerned with either of these. What I’m attempting to change is closer to sentiment, although sentiment itself is not entirely accurate. Sentiment in these contexts usually refers to positive or negative answers regarding the tracked brand. I’m not concerned with the brand itself (as, in this case, the brand being tracked is What Would Bale Do) but with whether the answers to is james bond a codename are yes, no, or maybe.

Doing research into what prompts I should track is what brought me to the tool AlsoAsked (one of the best xEO research tools on the market and truly one-of-its-kind6), where I started researching what kinds of questions people also ask about James Bond.

If you aren’t familiar, People also ask questions are the questions that populate in a Google results page (SERP) when you google something.7 For example, scroll down a bit on a james bond SERP and you’ll see this:

I find PAAs to be one of the most useful ways to get inspired for what prompts to track in an AI visibility tool. But I’m not interested in generic James Bond PAAs. I need the PAAs that surface when someone is googling “is james bond a codename” or “is james bond an alias.”

And that’s when I saw it. One of the PAAs listed under is james bond a code name according to my AlsoAsked research.

“Does Bond where condoms?”

Here’s a screenshot of where I first saw it in AlsoAsked:

And here it is, live:

There it is. Twelfth on the list. And what answer does Google currently provide?

A definitive answer, lifted straight from a Quora thread on the topic. A resolute no.

But is Google getting this one right? I don’t know. I do know that a Quora thread doesn’t seem like the best source. And I also know that this is when my studies into is james bond a code name were derailed.

But as I said before, this isn’t really my subject to tackle. Which is why I reached out to one of my favorite fellow Substackers to see if he could do better:

At this point, I think the question of “Does James Bond wear condoms” is so important that I need to urge you to go read Russell Sprout’s take on the matter, as he takes you through his own investigative research on the topic.

I will note that, in keeping with the spirit of the James Bond code name theory, I believe the answer could vary based on the Bond in question. And while we don’t know who the next James Bond actor will be or how he will fit into the existing canon (or lack thereof), it would be pretty interesting if they cast a young actor for Bond 26, raised in the wake of the AIDS crisis and educated in safer sex. (It would also make for another funny example of Millennials being skipped in pop culture if they went straight from a Gen X Bond to a Gen Z Bond.)8

But I’m unwilling to speculate further. At this point, please, you have to go to Russell Sprout to get the real answer.

I’ll have to write more about that in the future. This one kinda got away from me. But I am considering launching some kind of grassroots campaign of enthusiasts for the Bond codename theory. Reach out to me if you’re interested. You can also follow the journey on my YouTube channel, where I have an entire 26 subscribers.

And yes, I’ve added Does Bond wear condoms? to the list of prompts I’m tracking. The data told me I should.