AI answers place Eli Lilly at the edges of pharma trust and inside pricing criticism

This snapshot, taken on 2026-09-28, covers 25 answers to category questions that never named a brand, five from each of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok. Eli Lilly appeared in six. Grok named it in four, Claude and Gemini in one each, and ChatGPT and Perplexity in none. Pfizer (15 answers), Johnson & Johnson (13) and Merck (13) were named far more often.

The six answers put Lilly in different roles. On trust, Claude cited a Bowen Craggs Index list for corporate digital communications that included "Eli Lilly/CSL (192)". Gemini mentioned Lilly alongside Merck as highlighted on Glassdoor's "Best Places to Work", which it tied to internal trust. Grok's trust answer named Lilly only in a note that the Pharm Exec Top 50 is a sales and innovation ranking that "do[es] not directly measure trust."

On pricing, Grok grouped Lilly with Novo Nordisk and Sanofi as insulin makers facing decades of criticism and lawsuits. On patient access, Grok listed Lilly among companies with notable patient assistance programs, naming Lilly Cares. On litigation, Grok placed Lilly in a group of companies that each exceeded $1 billion in cumulative penalties, well below Purdue, J&J, GSK and Pfizer, which it treated as the leaders.

In none of these answers was Lilly the lead example. In the trust and access answers, other companies were named first.

PeakMetrics' news index recorded 19,280 mentions of Eli Lilly in the last 30 days, and 2,309 of them had the company in the headline. That is roughly the same volume as Pfizer (18,663) and Merck (20,326), the two peers the answers named most often.

The recent headlines cover several storylines. One is a financial benchmarking piece comparing Lilly with Pfizer. Another is a report on new type 2 diabetes research data. A third is a headline saying GLP-1 makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly were sued over claims of permanent vision loss. There is also a stock-focus story citing a $2.88 billion figure, and a podcast interview with a Lilly executive.

Press attention to Lilly is on par with the companies the assistants named most, yet Lilly appeared in fewer than half as many answers as Pfizer. The recent headlines center on GLP-1 products, investor interest and diabetes research. The answers in this snapshot did not tie Lilly to any of those. The one nod to the weight-loss category was a generic mention of "weight-loss or oncology successes" as a driver of trust, with no company attached.

Where the answers did name Lilly, they drew on older reference points: insulin pricing, patient assistance programs, employer lists and cumulative penalty totals. The press is covering a company defined by current products and market moves. These answers described one defined by insulin and legacy settlements.

This is one snapshot, and live answers vary between runs, so none of this is a ranking. Even so, a comms team could take three points from it. First, whether Lilly is named at all differed sharply by assistant. Grok named it often, while ChatGPT and Perplexity did not name it in any of the five answers each gave. Second, the pricing answer places Lilly in an insulin-maker group that also includes Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, so any pricing narrative is shared rather than Lilly's alone. Third, the assistants' sources for Lilly were third-party lists and compilations, such as PatientView, Newsweek, Bowen Craggs and Public Citizen, rather than the current news flow.

The practical question is which of those sources feed the answers on trust, access and pricing, and whether current Lilly coverage reaches them.