AI Will Transform PR — We’re Just Doing It Badly So Far

Everyone keeps saying that AI — ChatGPT, Claude and similar tools — is saving them time, making them more efficient, and freeing up their working hours. I’ve spent years in PR, enough to remember when the work still had a bit of blood in.

The best part for me was always the chase — finding the angle, the hook, the satisfaction of landing a story in exactly the right outlet, because this industry used to run on sharp thinking. Now a good part of my week is spent.

What Happened

But the whole thing has that college-report sheen so beloved by AI and so often mistaken for competence. There’s no pulse, no real point of view behind the words.

• But what if I told you that I now spend 50%, or even more, of my time reviewing and rewriting client texts that were, of course, generated by ChatGPT — and checking writers who.

• I keep a folder with hundreds of screenshots where I show clients that their content is 50–70% AI-produced — not even 10%.

• If we want to build meaningful communication, strong PR and viral trends, we have to keep human thinking at the centre of it.

Key Details

I disagree with the experts who insist a machine can never do what a PR professional does — that’s a comforting story, and comforting stories are how you get overtaken. Any business treating AI as a passing trend will fall behind.

• From moments you can’t predict — when someone says something that makes you stop and reconsider everything you thought you understood.

• Because for all the automation and efficiency, the best ideas still come from people.

• And if we don’t truly adapt, but just blindly use AI, then maybe we should start taking Elon Musk seriously when he says digital intelligence will surpass us all by the early 2030s.

Why It Matters

But adoption is not the same as competence. And right now, almost everyone in PR is using this tool badly.

• If we outsource our thinking, our professionalism and our lived experience to a machine, we risk losing the very thing that makes progress possible — original human insight.

• People with accountability and a voice of their own, who can look at AI-generated content and ask: does this make sense, does it say anything, does it achieve what we need?

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by The AI Journal as more details emerge