The Disruption is Real: AI will Forever Revolutionize How Communications Professionals Work

It’s such a fun parlor trick. Type a request into ChatGPT, and it spits out content. Some good, some bad. But none of it is relevant or threatening to my work. After all, corporate communications and public relations are more art than science. Or so I thought for the first 30 years of my career. 

Then two years ago, I began to immerse myself in generative AI. It began on a whim when an engineer claimed he could replicate how I write. Working together, we reverse-engineered the process. At first, using forms developed with the help of our own internal interviews and video trainings. And then, through crude databases that let us tag thousands of pieces of content written over a generation of work, not just by me but also by colleagues inside my public relations firm. Thirty-two years of content across hundreds of industries and scores of content types.   

That led us to AI and how our learnings could be applied. We spent 2022 building simple, intuitive UIs that made it easier to interface with powerful language modes. The more we refined the user experiences, the more precise the results, to the point where working with GPT-3, we can now deliver edit-ready copy that not only reflects a chosen subject matter expertise but also replicates the voice of the client and, most importantly, the needs of an audience. So as Steven Pinker explains, it approaches the audience on the same level that good writers approach theirs, understanding what they know, what they don’t know, and how to fill the gaps.  

But here’s our most remarkable finding. The content creation portion of AI pales in comparison to its real promise. By the time Microsoft embeds OpenAI in its software, good writing will be available to us all, placing what once was out of reach to many well within their grasp. Content aside, the real promise of AI is how it will revolutionize corporate comms and public relations, forever transforming our workflows. 

For too long, communicators have been immune to the tech revolution. While ERP and CRM have revolutionized the workflow of enterprises, communicators have resisted, clinging to old notions of content as an unreplicable artform. That’s why there are so many of us. Communications is now the 7th most popular college major, and many of those grads get jobs, some at my 120-person PR firm. They come to an unstandardized industry where operating procedures vary throughout. There’s no common technology that provides scalability or competency. Rather, each is left to discover their own path forward, which creates chaos, friction, confusion, and lowers quality.   

That’s where AI comes into full relief. It will provide a backbone of unimaginable efficiency whereby the machine gains familiarity, for lack of better word, with our business, products, and audiences. Not just facts but rather the nuance or awareness that accompanies that understanding. The machine will know that the CEO speaks in expansive, poetic language and that long-term shareholders must be communicated to as value investors instead of short-termers. The machine will help us turn out meaningful content down to an audience of one, the same way digital advertising reminds us of the exact product we were just looking at.  

And all the while, AI will direct our workflows. It will maintain the company’s corpus operis (reminding me not to use such fancy words) while constructing our strategy by aligning messaging with audiences and distribution channels.  

In crisis communications, it will build out the ecosystem of audiences, understand each of their self-interests, craft replies in real-time, and provide a range of brainstormed options for tone, content, and delivery. Internally, it will monitor employee channels and silently create content for newsletters and emails to address issues as they arise instead of waiting for humans to convene, argue among themselves, edit, and review.  

That’s the workflow of the future, all made possible by what is today the parlor trick of ChatGPT content creation. And one that we, as communicators, need to set aside our egos to fully embrace.