The continued noise around how AI will impact communications and Public Relations (PR) is deafening. Like all industries, communications professionals are experimenting with these new tools and deciding whether it makes sense to use them.
AI-Written Pitches is a Non-Starter for Publications
We have observed a growing chorus of complaints on LinkedIn from journalists at top tier publications and industry trades who are tired of receiving AI generated pitches. Right or wrong, the chief issue journalists have with AI pitches is that the PR person outsourced their work to a machine.
“If you can’t take the time to write it, why should I take the time to read it?” We’ve seen words like “recoil” and “disgust” when it comes to clearly AI generated pitches.
It’s likely because human journalists are often being weighed against AI by their employers for content generation. They don’t want to be pitched by the thing that will likely cause additional slimming of an already thin newsroom. More than the emotional response journalists have to AI pitches, we all know what a mass produced email looks like.
Personalized pitches have always been the baseline of a quality PR media outreach and AI doesn’t change that. Automation is great and can save time, but it doesn’t increase success if the pitches aren’t tailored to the specific journalists.
AI-Written Contributed Articles & Thought Leadership
The thing that AI is good at is scraping information available online and summarizing it into a condensed version. While this might be good for general research and getting up to speed on a topic quickly, but by its very nature, it can’t create original ideas.
If an editor is expecting an executive with years of experience to weigh in on an industry topic via thought leadership or a contributed article, and a summary of what others have already said (and has already been published) is delivered, there is no thought leadership. We are bumping into executives who use AI to quickly churn out articles, white papers and other documents that are supposed to provide a unique perspective and they are disappointed when their summary of other people’s comments doesn’t generate interest.
In addition to providing no new thoughts, editors are using AI identification tools to check for machine-generated content. Similar to a professor checking their student’s work for plagiarism, editors want to know that the content they are publishing is original and doesn’t contain any hidden IP pitfalls. The promise that is made when a PR person secures a thought leadership opportunity from a publication is that something original and interesting will be provided. A summary of what can be found via Google search does not clear the bar.
Rapid Response
This may be a nuance of the above, but AI should not be used for Rapid Response commentary. What we call “Rapid Response” can be called “News Hijacking,” “Newcycle Chasing,” or “Reactive PR” depending on the terminology your agency uses. It’s the practice of responding to journalists who are looking for expert commentary on breaking news or an ongoing news cycle. To meet fast deadlines, this practice usually starts with an email containing a quote that the reporter can copy and paste into their story.
A quote that has nothing new to offer is not going to be useful for a reporter. Some people might think, “What’s the harm if they don’t use my AI generated quote? Maybe they will, maybe they won’t – there is nothing lost in sending it to them.” But if you waste a journalist’s time they will simply blacklist your email address and quickly move on with their day. To spend a few minutes developing an original quote is worth the time when the alternative is losing the opportunity to approach a journalist or even an entire publication ever again.
AI-Generated Media Lists Produce Broad Junk
AI generated media lists have many of the same problems that entry level PR people make with their lists. The media lists that we have reviewed that have been created by AI don’t take into account the entire coverage area of a reporter.
Just because a reporter mentions a concept of company once, doesn’t mean that it is something that they are going to be regularly covering moving forward. If you review the complete body of coverage, these trends will emerge. There are also reporters that follow certain companies (Alphabet, Meta, Amazon for example) so while they might be covering a certain trend, they are only going to write about what the role these companies are playing in it.
Newsrooms are constantly shifting, reporters move and layoffs happen. Publication websites can be behind, and reporters that left years ago may still have an online profile. AI can’t tell the difference and will list reporters as currently working at a publication that they have moved on from. A seasoned PR professional understands all this and can tell in a glance that the lengthy AI-generated media list is not correct.
AI Liability Growing As Clients Take Action
There have been several court cases involving reports generated by consulting firms that used AI. The organizations that paid millions of dollars for expert advice are now taking these firms to court after it was uncovered that AI did the research and reporting.
If you pay human-expert prices and get AI hallucinations, you’re going to feel ripped-off. It goes back to trust. Even if the report did give a nugget of unknown truth to the client, it’s not what they paid for.
A human with years of experience, researching a specific topic in-depth and finding everything there is to know about a product and making customized recommendations is worth paying for. Reports generated with AI can make up sources or not tell you hard truths that may need to be discussed. Plus, reading about our clients and their industries is how we learn as professionals how to best serve them.
A list of articles or events can be put together by AI but the real thinking and insights come from people. Our clients are paying for our creativity to help them scale their businesses, and that is a trust you can’t generate with shortcuts.