All PR and communications agencies should make it clear to clients when and how they’re using AI tools to support with communications activity for clients, according to Sam Patchett, Client Director at communications agency Profile.
Patchett believes that the growing prominence and availability of AI is a positive trend in PR that can greatly strengthen agencies’ offerings, but that agencies should be fully transparent when using it to ensure clients aren’t being short-changed.
The intervention comes after over 1,000 experts and tech leaders, including Elon Musk, signed an open letter warning about the potential risks of human-competitive AI. Issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute, the letter urges tech giants to pause in the training of powerful AI systems due to the potential risks to society and humanity.
Patchett said the rapid development of AI impacts all sectors, but believes the PR industry should cautiously embrace the technology.
He commented: “AI is a force for good in the PR sector and can help strengthen agencies’ outputs while also making them more efficient and effective. It can assist with many of the more mundane tasks such as media monitoring and audio transcribing, but its growing capability means it can also can support more complex tasks such as writing social media posts or generating video content.
“That being said, agencies should always make it crystal clear to clients when and how they use AI tools. There’s a risk clients could be seriously over-charged if agencies are charging standard rates for services carried out using AI capabilities, which could seriously undermine trust in the industry.”
Profile, a fast-growing communications agency specialising in building the profiles of individuals, today published their own overview of how they use AI within their company. It outlines how the agency uses AI, listing tasks such as strategic positioning, media monitoring, press releases, blog posts and op-eds, and SEO articles.
It also laid out a series of core principles for using AI, stating that it should play a supporting role, not a leading one, and that its use should be incremental to ensure its impact can be measured and evaluated.
AI continues to play a growing role in people’s day-to-day lives, especially through the growing use of virtual assistants and smart technology. The recent release of the artificial chatbot ChatGPT spurred a swell of publicity about its potential uses within, and impact on, the workplace.
However, Patchett rejects the notion AI poses a serious risk to jobs in the PR sector, but stresses its implementation must be managed properly. He said Profile has already started rolling out the use of AI and continues to monitor its effectiveness.
He said: “AI won’t replace jobs in the PR sector. It enables agencies to designate more time, investment, and energy to value-add endeavours such as increased collaboration on projects, proactive media engagement, and creative content production.
“We continue to assess how AI can best support us and improve all outputs, while ensuring it only has a positive impact on our team, our company, our clients, and the content we produce.”
Profile’s AI Disclaimer can be found here.
