Notes from the AI front lines

The pre-AI era, one suspects, will soon appear as quaint for today's public relations professionals as fables of fax machines were for previous generations. It may have been three years since I collaborated with Sandpiper on the industry's first study into generative AI usage, but less than 12 months have passed since we were debating the technology's status as potential industry "enemy".

At the ICCO Global Summit in Mumbai six months ago, meanwhile, industry leaders submitted their clearest indications yet on how AI would reshape the profession. Today, barely a week passes without new tools, products, or platforms, all promising to reinvent everything we thought we knew about how public relations works. After a fairly lackadaisical start, it appears that the consultancy world has swung towards AI adoption at a pace that can sometimes appear breathtaking, even if in-house departments continue to lag.

The assembled cast at Mumbai was broadly aligned on the scale of the shift. Weber Shandwick global president Jim O'Leary described the next five years as representing more change than the previous five decades, citing BCG research that found 80% of communications work sitting within the "AI sweet spot." But "implementing AI itself is not a strategy," noted Burson chief innovation officer Chad Latz, with specific value lying entirely in how firms apply it.

On that question, however, agreement tends to dissolve, reflecting broader questions about AI's various applications. According to Matt Collette, founder of AI platform Sequencr, 72% of marcomms teams struggle to turn data into action; 56% lack the time to analyse all the data they hold; and 55% feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of channels they manage. With that in mind, the opportunity AI represents may be about more than just improving efficiency, but about processing and acting on information that currently sits unused.