In Today’s New World: AI and Public Relations Work Well Together

As a public relations/marketing professional, I have explored OpenAI’s Chat GPT and other AI-driven tools. These tools deliver immense efficiency, and what’s even more impressive is that they are only in their infancy in terms of development and function. However, most people believe that with tools like ChatGPT and Jasper AI that write blogs and ad copy, there will be no need for public relations professionals.

That is wrong, and here’s why:

They are still robots

As we dive deeper into AI writ large, a thread will increasingly merge: what human tasks can a robot do? The truth is that robots can pretty much do any task. However, to what degree of trust and efficacy? For instance, there is now AI technology that creates a life-like avatar that you can have a relatively seamless human interaction with. In the clip, it’s obvious that the man is interacting with a robot and is able to call the AI bot out fairly easily on it going to college.

However, as this and other technologies are further perfected, it will be much harder to discern robot from human, increasing skepticism over time in digital platforms. This will, in turn, increase the desire for more human interaction over time. It’s like being catfished (I imagine, because I haven’t been) — you were scammed, and it hurts. It leaves a lasting mark. And that will happen when people start realizing, after meaningful conversations, that they’re speaking with a robot when they thought it was a human.

Balancing efficiency and human-like qualities

That’s where a public relations professional comes in. Whether it is internal to a team or through an agency, a human has the capacity to critically think and assess every angle of a task (blog, op-ed, marketing campaign, announcement, etc.). They have the capacity to “soften” language, make nuanced changes to an argument, talk with a manager or client as to why this wording is better than the previous.

This is not to say that some PR specialists won’t lose their jobs, but as a whole, corporations, companies, and non-profits will need an experienced individual who can cut through the robotic communications and make meaningful relationships online while understanding how to use these AI-powered tools to drive efficiency.

If your PR support can do either of those, you should find someone who can–quickly.