“We are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time”. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is rarely one to mince his words on AI’s power. He is not alone. Some have likened it to the arrival of the Atomic Age. One now (in)famous article from Citrini Research described a world of fractured economies, mass unemployment, and governments at a loss of what to do.
It is easy to cast these off as hyperbole and unfounded hype. A better way of unpacking it all is to see it as a world reckoning with a heady mix of fear, uncertainty, and genuine excitement about the possibilities of this powerful technology. It is inarguable that generative AI developed at an extraordinary pace since its ‘Rubicon’ moment in 2022 with the arrival of ChatGPT. In a few short years we have progressed from it being a simple answer engine to a deep research tool and (with the rise of agentic AI) an increasingly autonomous part of workflows like coding and financial analysis.
Yet this progress can create so much noise that it drives confusion and uncertainty in the market. Facing this seemingly infinite possibilities, many business leaders struggle to find a long-term strategy that is right for them, casting around for a way to innovate with generative AI before their competitors do so. That is to say nothing for employees. Data on both sides of the Atlantic, from Gallup in the US and Institute of Student Employers in the UK, points to growing anxiety about AI and its threat to their job prospects: just 18% Gen Z respondents in the US said they felt hopeful about the technology (compared to 27% last year).
Comms as a profession is not immune from these challenges. Far from it. We face a world with a technology that is, at first glance, readily suited to our knowledge-based services sector. Press releases – tick. Blogs – tick. Social media – tick. Reporting – tick. News monitoring – tick. Market intelligence – tick.
But if you scratch beneath the surface, there are deep and profound challenges in AI’s role in comms. A landmark research series from Stanford in the last year documented the rise of low-value, poorly written AI-generated ‘workslop’. Its startling findings highlighted that a wave of workslop is slowing productivity for US business, as workers get bogged down in lengthy rewrites, internal culture fractures, and businesses face a financial hit potentially in the millions in lost time.
Comms is particularly vulnerable here. Poorly implemented, AI risks turning comms into something bland and generic. Every press release, every newsjack, every blog, every op-ed starts to look the same. LinkedIn is overflowing with journalists rightly bemoaning being deluged with generic, AI-generated pitches – at a scale that would have been unthinkable before 2022. And if every agency starts doing it, how will businesses ever be able to stand out? A future could even beckon where the profession feels irrelevant, nothing more than execution function that can be automated away at the press of a button.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A path through this disruption is there. It starts with thinking. Full offloading of critical thinking and inquiry to AI, variously called “cognitive offloading” but more accurately called “cognitive surrender” in The Economist, is (to put it mildly) not the secret to getting the most of AI. It turns comms professionals into empty vessels, surrendering core principles of consultancy, creativity and partnership that are at the heart of what clients pay us for. AI is there to augment and enhance, not replace a process entirely.
Instead, we should be building a profession that uses AI to let the human element in our work shine.
We need to start by reimagining our ways of working. Comms has frequently been a siloed and cluttered business function, loosely holding together legacy knowledge of ‘what good looks like’, best practices little changed in years, and multiple, difficult to manage tools. This disconnected structure is ill suited to thrive in an AI era. Success lies in “PR-Ops”, a new methodology that focuses on building infrastructure that centralises all our processes and tools in one place. This gives us a streamlined, low-friction workflows and, crucially, a centralised knowledge base for AI to learn from, and for PR professionals to provide the high-value intelligence clients rely on.
From here, we can start to get really ambitious in reimagining comms processes. The refrain (long before ChatGPT was but a glint in Sam Altman's eye) was that AI enables workers to focus on 'higher order' tasks. But what does that mean in practice?
Take the average day of an Account Executive. Before generative AI, that might have meant anywhere up to half the day caught up with manually filling in spreadsheets, pulling together reports by hand, and Googling for coverage. That chunk of the pie can now shrink dramatically. In an era where PR is operationalised, these processes can be run fairly autonomously in the background. And that frees up your team's time, and crucially your client's budget, to be used on tasks that matter for them: strategy meetings, pitching journalists, putting together creative and human campaigns that cut through the noise, writing original articles that tell your client's story…the list goes on.
Success also comes from setting standards internally. If you don’t, then employees will fill the gap. Setting the guardrails from day 1 builds trust and ensures everyone in the team understands what is expected of them. Many of our clients have shown what is possible here for us, championing AI innovation internally and encouraging team members to set AI-first goals in their development.
Frameworks are particularly important when it comes to writing content. AI is a carefully integrated part of our workflows. We embrace AI’s incredible potential for deep research, explaining new and complex topics in new ways. Time and again we’ve seen AI’s increasing ability to analyse data at scale, parsing results and planning out content. With detailed prompts (backed up by well-established client knowledge base) it can even break the dreaded curse of the blank page and get the ball rolling on content writing. But there are many more steps before something is client-ready. The overall standard of producing creative, impactful and original content for our clients remains unchanged. Writing needs to be led by humans who know what good looks like, are experts on writing and editing high-quality copy, and (backed up by AI) can deliver that at pace time and again.
Beyond all the noise on processes and technology, business success in the AI era begins and ends with people. The Financial Times is leading the way here with its reporting on how AI is transforming work. It reported a “workplace divide” in AI usage, with high earners and older employees the most likely to embrace the technology. Turning this around, it argues, requires concerted investment in training to encourage adoption. It also requires resolving a dilemma around helping young people get the experience to understand how to most effectively apply AI in their work.
Some are answering this problem with short-term solutions. Vacancies for entry-level roles have dropped, as some companies (including some PR agencies) opt for a “Diamond business model” with less employees at the bottom and a middle of experienced managers orchestrating agents as “human checkpoints”. This model may work for short term efficiency at some agencies, but the problem is unresolved: where are the leaders of tomorrow coming from?
Too many PR companies are sticking their heads in the sand on the impact of AI and the next generation of talent. An AI-literate generation is arriving in the workforce right now. These are people who went to university when ChatGPT exploded. They are used to it and view it as the default way to find out information, develop ideas, and generally support their writing. Many remain deeply committed to “intentional” use of AI, supporting but not replacing learning.
We have a fantastic opportunity to capitalise on this talent to reimagine how we work - reinventing new programmes and processes to support our clients. But there is a deeper skills challenge here. We cannot allow AI-first, to become AI-only. Cognitive offloading to AI is real, and is just as impactful on new grads as it is on people who've been in the industry for decades.
We have taken action to reinvent our grad training process for this new world. We do not believe in a diamond shaped workforce. Our focus is on investing in talent in the right way.
All grads that join us receive AI-first onboarding. Our AI platform, Agentcy, teaches them the agile processes of this new era - vetting and monitoring automated coverage tracking, intelligent news scanning to find opportunities for clients, and reporting all done at the press of a button. Alongside this, we have the evergreen skills. Every grad who comes through our doors learns how to write excellent copy. They learn how to research for data, making the most of AI's incredible deep research capabilities, and matched with the vital human skills of analysis and curiosity to vet a source. And we have guided workshops for them on communication.
Our world is still splintered and recovering from COVID. People crave connection. Growing a business and building a relationship with clients comes down to the art of human connection - whether it is clear and concise emails, or that forgotten art - picking up the telephone.
By taking this approach from the ground up, PR has every opportunity to find its place. We are guided by the PRCA’s new definition: "PR is a strategic management discipline that builds trust, enhances reputation and helps leaders interpret complexity and manage volatility”, across a broadening range of channels that provide both new ways to reach key audiences, and new sources of intelligence to support business decision-making.
Realising AI’s potential is not a given. A Harvard Business Review article describes how “the future is shrouded in an AI fog”. Old certainties are on shaky ground, as businesses plan for a technology that proposes unparalleled change – even if it is not all here yet. The article rightly encourages leaders to stay agile, preserve “optionality/optimising for the unknown”. Comms needs to embrace this mindset. Standing still and trying to stick to old ways of doing things isn’t an option. We need to operationalise PR, turning it into a function that embraces the changing winds of technology change, supports the next generation, and is ready to grow with our clients.
Optimising for the unknown is one, slightly ‘business-speak’ way of talking about this new world. How about a slightly bolder vision: building a bridge through the AI fog to PR’s better future.