AI is all the rage, but can it do the job of a communications professional?

You’ve probably heard all the buzz about Elon Musk’s AI platform, Chat GPT, but can it really do the job of a communications professional?

The short answer is no – not in 2023, anyway.

As Australian universities threaten to return to ‘pen and paper’ exams, and software that claims to ‘detect the use of AI’ offers a temporary solution, it’s clear artificial intelligence is causing a stir.

As communications professionals,  talk of AI-assisted writing tools and natural language processing (NLP) was enough to get our attention, but not enough to worry us just yet.

We are professional storytellers, who work with clients to unearth their stories and craft exceptional content that leads to business growth and brand recognition. Until AI is able to build genuine relationships, we feel safe in our ability to give your stories legs!

Call us old fashioned, or better yet, realistic, but AI isn’t capable of doing the job of a well-rounded communications professional and like the hype around self-driving cars, this too has been exaggerated.

PR and communications requires a human touch, which is what we do best at Pitch.

AI as our partner in content

Instead of viewing AI-writing tools as a threat, we consider them a valuable resource to do things like establish optimal keywords for SEO, optimise content for specific platforms, translate audio to text, and analyse existing content for accuracy.

The human touch we spoke about earlier is integral to ensuring careful use of tone, consistent brand strategy, and strategic communications written by humans, for humans.

Here are five examples of how we anticipate using AI to be beneficial in the marketing and communications space:

1. Media monitoring and analysis: AI tools can monitor and analyse millions of news articles, social media posts, and other online content in real-time, providing valuable insights and trends.
2. Graphic creation: Graphic design AI tools can assist with generating complex images and artwork, which an experienced design team is then able to adapt and improve upon. It’s almost like having a famous painter in your back pocket.
3. Chatbots and virtual assistants: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can help to handle routine customer enquiries and provide 24/7 customer service.
4. Sentiment analysis: AI sentiment analysis tools can crawl large amounts of social media data, offering powerful insights into the language audiences identify with.
5. Predictive analytics: AI-driven predictive analytics tools can help anticipate future trends and make strategic adjustments to content and social media strategies.

Limitations of non-sentient intelligence

AI technology only generates content using established information. Nothing is original, nothing is new, and form takes a back seat to function.

Our main gripe with AI is that it’s biased, depending on the data used to ‘train’ or build the models being used. It isn’t for or against anything it writes about and, as a result, we find the content lacks emotional engagement.

Another limitation is that AI models can be difficult to interpret, in that we never really know how it arrived at a decision or output. An example of this would be if it has established a predictive social media trend, without offering any justification (which is usually the case).

Many of us at Pitch cut our teeth as journalists, so fact checking and thorough background research is central to how we operate. AI doesn’t cite its sources for output text or recommendations, and put simply, that’s a problem for us.

Additionally, AI is still in the early stages of development, and its capabilities are still quite limited compared to human intelligence. AI models have a hard time dealing with situations that humans can handle with ease, such as understanding context, sarcasm, and irony, or reasoning through complex problems that require creativity. It also goes without saying that it cannot tell a story quite like a human can – meaning the content it spits out can be repetitive and not very engaging.

While AI has the potential to harness the true power of the wonderful and wacky information highway we know as the internet, it just isn’t quite there yet. At this stage, we choose to use AI responsibly and ethically as an ‘assistive’ tool—at best.

We firmly believe, after much deliberation and intensive office-based ‘research’ using Chat GPT (involving speed writing challenges, accuracy tests, and tricky style challenges), that we are simply better writers than any AI!

Be alert, but not alarmed – the future is here

And on that note, we are proud to unveil Pitch AI – the most reliable communications service money can buy.

Just kidding, we’re au naturel here at Pitch Public Relations and we put our money on being able to offer bespoke, human-centric storytelling that no AI is capable of.

With more than 100 years of combined experience in the media and communications industry, we’ve got the skills, contacts and expertise to get exposure for the stories you want to shout from the rooftops and to quash the ones you don’t. Get in touch here to chat all things PR, content and social media.