Many people are incorrectly saying that "SEO is dead". This is objectively false, and we see so in the data.
SEO and AI optimization are highly correlated. This is because AI is using search tools to retrieve data from the internet. This means we're still optimizing for search.
That being said, there are unique aspects of how AI searches the web that creates opportunities for brands. AI does not suffer the same sharp attention span dropoff that humans do; it also cares significantly less about things like domain authority. Instead, AI is solely focused on the relevancy of the search result and corresponding content to the original user query.
Because of this, AI will typically pull the top ~50 results for a given search, and distribute attributions much more evenly than Google. Humans almost never click past the first page; AI does every time. This means we can target the long tail for as many keywords as possible, rather than fight tooth-and-nail for the #1 position on a SERP.