AI is rapidly transforming the PR and marketing landscape, offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance efficiency, creativity, and data-driven decision-making. However, with these opportunities come significant risks and challenges that must be proactively addressed. As industry leaders, PRAXIS believes it’s our responsibility to strike the right balance – harnessing the power of AI to drive innovation while ensuring responsible adoption guided by robust ethical principles and human oversight.
We also believe that AI poses unique challenges for our clients in the realm of reputation management as the volume of disinformation continues to grow. As PR professionals, we are uniquely positioned to help guide our clients through these turbulent times, but this necessitates foresight and adapting existing crisis management frameworks to address new challenges.
For our clients who are contemplating AI’s impact on their business, we have assessed the promises and perils of AI in PR and marketing and encourage our team and our clients to focus in on these key areas: understanding AI’s current capabilities, exploring emerging trends, and navigating the unique PR risks/ethical concerns of AI to support adoption frameworks and solutions.
AI’S CURRENT CAPABILITIES
AI technology is rapidly evolving, bringing forth new capabilities that are reshaping the PR and marketing landscape. AI has already made significant inroads, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness across various tasks. These tools are transforming how work is being done by PR professionals, including the following practical examples that are being applied to the industry today by agencies and brands are:
- CONTENT GENERATION: press releases, pitches, social copy, images & videos
- DATA ANALYSIS: media monitoring, audience insights
- AUTOMATION: email outreach, social media posting, reporting
- LIST GENERATION: updating/maintaining media lists & influencer lists
While Generative AI is no doubt an asset, the expectation at PRAXIS is that it will be used primarily for first drafts, with the expectation that all staff will review and edit the content to ensure its quality, authenticity, and originality. Our clients ultimately hire us for our creative thinking and the vast amount of context and background we have about their brands, and thus delivering any material explicitly sourced from AI will not be considered acceptable.
EMERGING TRENDS & PLATFORMS
Every day, new trends are emerging in AI, and we believe it’s important to take a proactive approach when identifying innovative tools and platforms to monitor how they are evolving. As a 4-Day Week agency, we are always on the lookout for opportunities that save time or enhance creativity by providing a starting point or even initial drafts for various content types.
Some of the ones we’re exploring are:
- GENERATIVE AI (Text, Images, Audio/Video): revolutionize content creation by enabling high-quality, customized outputs at scale.
- AI-POWERED COPYWRITING: create compelling, relevant, and SEO-optimized content.
- COMPUTER VISION AND IMAGE RECOGNITION: analyze visual content, automate image tagging, and enhance user experiences with augmented reality.
- AVATARS AND CLONES: Virtual representations of individuals, for marketing, customer service, and even influencer campaigns.
At the same time, any new technology must be approached with a degree of caution. Safeguarding both ours and our clients’ data and intellectual property is of the utmost importance, recognizing that unauthorized use or disclosure of such information could have severe consequences.
Furthermore, it’s essential to caution against the direct copying or plagiarizing of content. At PRAXIS, staff members are expected to demonstrate the value they bring to each project by submitting work that can authentically be described as their own.
NAVIGATING AI RISKS IN THE PR LANDSCAPE
AI presents various risks, including deepfakes, disinformation, privacy issues, and a deficit in transparency and accountability. Many companies and brands believe they are impervious to attacks on their reputation. However, the vast amount of content generated by AI, coupled with widespread uncertainty about the behavior of these tools, suggests that it’s inevitable for disinformation to target any company eventually. To effectively manage these risks, it’s critical to develop a comprehensive PR and reputation management strategy that incorporates both proactive and reactive measures.
PROACTIVE MEASURES
- Implement Ethical Guidelines
- Enhance Transparency
- Conduct Regular Audits
- Train PR Teams on AI technologies
- Educate consumers about AI technologies
REACTIVE MEASURES
- Updated Crisis Management Plans with AI considerations
- Quick Response Protocols
- Public Statements
- Continuous AI Driven Monitoring
- Collaborate with Regulators
Consider this real-world scenario: a major brand faces a crisis when a deepfake video of their CEO making inappropriate statements surfaces online. If, prior to the incident, the brand had already implemented AI ethics guidelines and regularly audited their systems, they would have a trained PR team and clear crisis management plans place. They would also likely have comprehensive AI driven monitoring in place that would have alerted them to the situation earlier than manual monitoring would have allowed for, ensuring they had ampel time to react.
As such, a rapid response team would quickly identify the deepfake and issue a public statement clarifying the misinformation. They would immediately file complaints with social media platforms to remove the fake video. They would also leverage AI tools to monitor on an ongoing basis and address public sentiment to ensure they had a clear understanding of when the crisis had subsided.
The brand would also platform themselves in the immediate aftermath and engage with consumers through educational content about deepfakes and AI technology, ensuring consumers are clear that the brand is aware of what has happened and advising them on how to spot real vs. fake content produced by their company or brand.
PRAXIS COMMITMENT
By adopting AI responsibly and innovatively, PRAXIS is poised to play a role in the transformation of the PR landscape while upholding the highest standards of ethics and accountability. We remain dedicated to leading the industry in leveraging AI’s potential to create meaningful and impactful brand experiences. At the same time, we’re committed to transparency in our AI processes, providing clients and staff with clear insights into how AI-driven decisions are made. We will continue to collaborate with industry leaders and regulatory bodies to promote responsible AI use and establish best practices. Ultimately, PRAXIS aims to lead by example, fostering an environment of ethical innovation in the PR industry.
This article is a preview of a PRAXIS U session, a complimentary one-hour session that PRAXIS offers to brands looking to grow their marketing knowledge. To book your session, email [email protected] and we’ll even treat you to lunch!
