AI adoption in public relations limited, so far
Adoption of AI in public relations is slow, hindered by skills and organisational investment
A USC Annenberg and WE Communications report - Fascinated and Frightened: How are communications professionals viewing the ai opportunity ahead? - finds that the public relations industry is slow to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI).
Four-fifths of the 400 US respondents acknowledge the potential disruption that AI could bring to public relations practice, but less than one-fifth are knowledgeable about the application of AI.
This is consistent with data published by ICCO in March. It reported that 15% of public relations leaders use AI frequently or fairly frequently. A quarter said that they will never use AI tools.
According to the USC Annenberg and WE Communications report, AI innovation in public relations is driven by individuals rather than a structured organisational approach. Less than a quarter of respondents said their organisation is changing workflow due to new AI tools.
It’s a surprising data point. Outside of the public relations industry, the launch of ChatGPT has meant that AI is no longer an issue siloed in innovation or research and development teams and has become a strategic C-level priority.
AI went mainstream following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Anyone with a web browser can ask the tool to generate text, role play or perform creative tasks. It's also used as the basis of other applications ranging from a new assistant for Microsoft Office applications to third-party tools to help make sense of large chunks of text.
Where practitioners are experimenting with AI, innovation is focused on generative applications. Three-in-five respondents have experimented with ChatGPT from OpenAI, followed by Bing Chat (35%) and Google Bard (33%).
The same report could have been written in the past 30 years about how public relations was slow to adapt to the internet, search engine optimisation, social media, and PESO.
Innovation is not normative within public relations practice. We have a limited relationship with academia and do not invest in research and development. The issue is compounded by tightening budgets within agencies and communication teams.
According to respondents to the report, improved efficiency and reduced workload is the most likely benefit of AI. The payoff is expected to be creativity and higher-value work. The ability to make sense of large datasets provides a strategic opportunity for research and modelling.
A common organisational approach to innovation is breaking down existing workflow into discrete tasks to see how it might be disrupted by new technology. We published a case study in March showing how we used AI to generate headlines, a press release, and a pitch for a report.
Public relations practitioners recognise the opportunity to advocate within organisations for the moral and ethical concerns related to AI. Security, privacy, and disinformation are cited as the primary concerns.
Practitioners must rapidly skill up and embrace AI to understand its impact on their practice and workflow. If not, we’ll fail to gain the benefit in our practice, and other professions will move into the professional advisory space.
Jean Valin and Professor Emeritus Anne Gregory are investigating the impact of AI on public relations practice for a CIPR study. If you work in public relations, please help by completing this short survey.
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