Is AI the Future of PR?

I was recently asked, “What trends should we be watching out for in terms of the future of PR?” Well, according to my 75-year-old mother — and lots of other interested observers — the future of PR looks like it’s populated with a little AI, some more AI … well, okay, entirely with AI.

If you’re a business owner considering letting AI run your PR show for you, let me tell you why that’s a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan myself; I’ve steadily been incorporating AI tools and tasks into my daily workflow, and I get the appeal. And the added efficiency.

But as a two-decade veteran in this field, I also know a helluva lot more about PR than any bot you can call on, and here’s my take on where things stand now and where they look like they’re going in the marriage between PR and AI.

AI is great in the passenger’s seat, not the driver’s

AI makes for an incredible assistant. PR professionals can benefit from it tremendously in myriad areas, such as drafting initial press releases and pitches, creating data-based reports and analyzing audience/consumer preferences and trends. The time savings (and thus the concomitant cost-efficiency) are indisputable.

But public relations, by definition, involves the “public” — a public that expects cultural awareness, responds to qualities like empathy and humor, and demands ethical accountability. Last I looked, AI doesn’t live by a moral code, it isn’t a sentient being personally sensitive to any specific cultural milieu, and it certainly isn’t the funniest guest at the party!

So long as the “public” with which our industry deals turns to us for solid expertise, sound judgment and fair business practices, human intuition and integrity should steer the vehicle, not algorithms.

Related: AI Is Changing Public Relations — Here’s How to Stay in Control

The old-fashioned meetup is still a thing

Remember when everyone thought books were going to die once Kindle hit the market? And yet reading is still a beloved pastime in America, with most readers still preferring printed books over ebooks, relishing the touch, feel, smell and experience of turning actual pages.

The same applies to PR. Journalists love it when we pop into the office to bring them a coffee and have a chat. Media contacts readily accept our personal invites to restaurant openings or product launches. Influencers welcome the opportunity to come meet us at a new venue or promoted site and actively participate in our PR efforts.

And when it comes to PR clients, they, too, appreciate sitting across the table from us face-to-face, where we can see each other’s expressions, read each other’s gestures, shake hands hello and hug goodbye in person. AI can’t replace eye contact and shared smiles, the authentic moments of connection that form client bonds.

So long as “relations” remains part of our industry name, being in the same room with someone is always going to bring you closer than ChatGPT output. Which leads me to …

Relationships will always trump datasets

Cue up Streisand for this one: “People who need people …” As smart and spiffy as AI is, it is not and never will be a person. People build rapport. People establish credibility. People learn to trust one another. People interpret emotions and moods. And people can adapt on the spot when they sense the discomfort of clients, stakeholders or team members.

I’m excited about implementing AI to help my firm with research, scheduling, campaign details and delivering up-to-the-minute insights about my clients’ customer base. But AI will never hold a meeting with one of my clients. It will never anticipate their needs, see their eyes light up when we come up with a brilliant plan or reassure them when an initiative doesn’t land as hoped.

Idea generation, mapping out a project and determining custom-tailored campaign goals for a particular client are best left to the experts. Why? Because AI’s intelligence is artificial. Humans, on the other hand, possess EI — emotional intelligence.

Related: Why Emotional Intelligence Is the Key to High-Impact Leadership

AI is more prone to mistakes than people are

Sounds improbable, right? How can machine learning be inferior to us flawed and fallible mortals? I’m not talking here about mistakes like typos or forgetting to order the banners for the fundraiser. I’m talking about the things that really matter in PR, like understanding societal nuances, interpersonal dynamics, behavioral psychology and actual lived experience.

And when AI gets that wrong? The consequences can be serious for clients. Using no-longer-acceptable language. Producing content that could be offensive to certain populations. Providing out-of-context information. And, most notably for our purposes, communicating faulty messaging.

In PR, marketing and advertising, messaging is everything. Humans can better spot potential pitfalls with language (even if it is absolutely technically correct) and can better discern the tone and subtext of customer engagement communication. So it’s great to use AI for media monitoring and sentiment analysis. But what to do with the results of those measures should remain in the hands of real-life pros who employ cognitive reasoning, not just logic; who shrewdly apply information, not just amass and analyze it; and who can make moral judgments when called for.

SIDE NOTE here on crisis communications: Using AI to manage crises is a whole different topic unto itself. For now, suffice it to say: It’s a no-no. Keep out! When an individual’s or company’s reputation is at stake, coming across as tone-deaf can toll the death knell for their public image. And the generative AI tools we have available today (the type of AI content-focused industries like mine are using far more than agentic) definitely runs the risk of sounding too factual, too formulaic, too … well, inhuman, right when a human touch is needed most.

Keep your eye on integrative PR

So what do I think the wave of the future is? Integrative PR — an approach that blends all the various communication channels into a cohesive whole for consistent branding across all platforms, no longer separating different aspects of marketing and public relations into different compartments.

Of course AI will play a significant role as we shift toward more social media–focused campaigns and more content curation taking the place of strictly media relations, which traditionally dominated PR. But the type of integration I envision requires creativity, first and foremost, coupled with inventive strategy and finding new connections where none existed before.

Generative AI relies on anything and everything that has existed before, and precisely for that reason, I believe humans will remain the alchemists who bring humanity to PR. After all, PR is an art, not a science. And art is made by artists — original thinkers and doers, master storytellers, who will ever play the starring role on this always-changing, wildly interesting stage of public relations.