Regulated brands are not invisible in AI answers because compliance blocks them. They are invisible because approved content is written in a shape answer engines cannot extract: long, hedged, unsegmented prose with the substantiation buried in a footnote or a gated PDF. That is the problem AEO for regulated industries has to solve.
The fix is a change of order. Stop writing content and then asking reviewers to approve claims. Build the substantiation table first, get the evidence and the exact approved wording agreed, then assemble answer blocks that restate approved, sourced material without introducing anything new. Compliant content built that way passes review faster, because reviewers are checking a restatement rather than adjudicating a claim.
This playbook specifies the substantiation table format, the answer-block patterns that survive review, a three-round workflow, a reviewer-facing explanation of why these formats are not promotional, and how to measure citation when query volume is too low for share-of-voice tools. Reviewers always have final say.