Are you at risk of being sucked up into the vortex of an AI tornado?
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PR professionals are increasingly pressured to adopt AI technology to improve their ROI. This article demonstrates why it's important to hang on a little longer until the storm passes.
The impact of AI on the PR sector is a hot topic right now. It's so hot that PR software solutions are rushing to incorporate it into their software, hoping they can win early adopters of the technology and retain their existing client base, but are they going too soon?
Trillion with a 'T'
In an article originally published in the Harvard Business Review in July 2018, Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, said, "AI can create $1.4-$2.6 trillion of value in marketing and sales across the world's businesses". PR fits into that stunning multi-trillion ('yes', with a "t") dollar valuation. While his prediction may be correct, the PR sector may have to kiss many frogs before they find their prince.
The air up here is thin up here.
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At its peak, AI will transform how PR and the media ecosystem; however, there's quite a climb before it reaches this dizzying height.
The air up here is thin up here.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
At its peak, AI will transform how PR and the media ecosystem; however, there's quite a climb before it reaches this dizzying height.
Lab rat or responsible PR professional
In recent conversations, I have noticed many in the PR space testing solution like ChatGTP, either for competitive research or looking for a productivity partner. Results seem mixed, but the overwhelming response is 'it's not there yet'. Many see technology as undercooked. It does some tasks moderately, but the more test you do you may find something doesn't feel right. That's because it's not. There have been extraordinary claims about the power of this technology, but as it stands today, it has a severe problem. Talk to AI experts, and many will tell you that AI in its current form is prone to what they term 'hallucination'.
Do you really want to experiment with your reputation?
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AI is a technology deliberately released from the lab to see how it performs in the real world. For PR professionals, AI's current iterations and applications may be too underdone for your needs.
Do you really want to experiment with your reputation?
Getty Images/iStockphoto
AI is a technology deliberately released from the lab to see how it performs in the real world. For PR professionals, AI's current iterations and applications may be too underdone for your needs.
Are we seeing what's not there?
An AI hallucination is not the same as a human hallucination. An AI hallucination is instead a confident response by an AI that cannot be grounded in its training data. AI can also become delusional, where it thinks it starts to believe it's the writer of a paper or thinks it's human. Worrying as this may be in our future, the problem for today is accuracy. AI today can ignore instructions (for reasons unknown) and prioritise some outlier beliefs of the majority body of proven information. Hallucination is a severe concern in high-risk/high-reward strategic communications. Whereas fixing this problem is a high priority for AI developers, it's tough to fix if you don't understand it.
Is that a unicorn?
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You must see AI for what it is; otherwise, you might find yourself saddled with a beast you can't control.
Is that a unicorn?
Getty Images/iStockphoto
You must see AI for what it is; otherwise, you might find yourself saddled with a beast you can't control.
How PR can benefit from AI, in the near future
There is no question that AI will be transformative for the PR and strategy communication space; however, there will need to be a lot of Beta testing in the real world before organisations begin to trust AI. The question is, do you want to be that tester?
The alternative is to wait a little longer for a solution that takes AI technology and introduces a better information-filtering process that delivers a customised voice for your organisation. Such as solution would depend less on information from external sources, building your own language that utilises the lexicons of your target audiences, overlayed with reinforcement AI data that builds on successful media pitches. You also want a solution that understands the complexity of your approval processes and the legal ramifications of getting language and visual narratives wrong. There is such a solution in development, but it won't be ready for this year's Christmas list.
