Is AI in the future of PR?

Since AI tools appeared online, people in all industries have rushed to test them out, mostly under the guise of being able to save a lot of time. But like all things, surely time saving alone is too good to be true?

At Lucky North, we took a closer look to examine how AI tools could be used in PR, and whether or not we’d ever want them.

It’s easy to be sceptical of AI. There’s the huge threat that developments in technology mean potential job losses, something we all want to avoid. But what about the gaps in which it could add to our jobs, rather than take anything away?

For those not immersed in the tech world, AI might still sound pretty futuristic, but the truth is the PR industry (and many others) has been using elements of it for a while.

Google Analytics is arguably not overly new, yet PRs have benefitted from its uses for years. Being able to collect and analyse huge amounts of data from variable sources to track trends and the effectiveness of campaigns ensure coverage isn’t missed. Industry-specific software is designed just for this and brings some great benefits. Manually trawling through every news website in the UK is arguably not the best use of anyone’s time, and in this case, AI is often much quicker. Likewise, situations such as interviews are a great place for AI to sit. When we need to later transcribe an interview for campaign content, having reliable tools which allow us to find the segments we need easily are a real plus.

The lesson here is not to fall into the trap of over-reliance. Like in most industries, AI will have its purpose but we need to collectively recognise its limits. Transcribing notes for us? Great. Using those notes to compile an automatically written press release, with zero human research? Absolutely not.

But let’s get to the main point here – PR is about human-to-human connection. It’s what our wonderful clients pay for and absolutely cannot be replicated by a computer. On a very basic level, PRs that use AI to curate press releases and write campaign pitches are only going to take away any contribution of a useful hook that ultimately results in media coverage.

We’ve talked before about just how competitive getting in front of journalists can be. When securing coverage is an entire artform including timing, research, personalisation and precise content, it would be damaging to any campaign to rely on AI generated content to get the desired results. And that’s just at a basic level.

When we dive deeper into PR, particularly the more serious side of stakeholder and crisis comms, we see the undoubtable need for the human experience. Nobody is going to take an urgent call from a client about a sudden disaster needing a very careful media response and hand it over to AI. Why not? Because PR is so much more than the words on a page. Yes, as PRs we craft amazingly intricate media content, but we also deliver it in ways that are so specialist we have spent years recruiting the right team to handle it. If it takes that long to find the right people, we reckon it would take millennia to create a programme that could do it. And even then, who’s going to sit and listen to a computer in a crisis?

When the worst thing that can happen in your business happens, you need the knowledge, first-hand experience and ultimately, a clear head, that only a time-served PR professional can provide.

Public relations is an industry built on the capacities of skilled people. The creativity, the deep research and the relationships between agency and client and agency and the media are simply not replicable.

We’re keeping an eye on the AI landscape, and we’ll be first on-hand to cope with the disruptions it brings, both for our own industry and our clients’. For now though, we’re seeing its limits and we’re continuing to outperform our target results for clients month on month. Now show us AI that can pop the champagne for us…