If I Had a Hammer (or Why AI Does Not a PR Writer Make)

​Like many others, we’ve seen a variety of emails and posts touting the benefits of AI for generating press releases and other PR content.  A company promoting its marketing platform that recently sent an email talking about how its AI solution can save you $8,000 a month by generating content for you.  And a LinkedIn expert who posted an example of a great article he wrote on cybersecurity, using AI.

Except that the email for the marketing platform contained two typographical/grammatical errors in the first sentence alone - not the best first impression of the quality of their writing expertise.  The AI generated article?  It wasn’t very good, hard to follow, and in fact the post has since been removed - we are guessing probably because of feedback from others echoing our impression. 

At best, AI in its current iteration produces average to mediocre content - the complete opposite of the goal of PR.  Public relations is all about making a company stand out, to discover what is newsworthy about its products and its story, and then promoting that to the media and its target audiences.  And as with any industry, not all PR professionals or writers are the same, or get the same results.  It is the value and expertise each one brings to the table.

If I had a hammer - it wouldn’t make me a journeyman carpenter.  Just because you have AI to help generate content doesn’t make you a writer, or that your news release, story pitch or article will stand out to attract the interest of the media.  There is more to a press release, for example, than hammering out the words - the actual writing is the final step in a whole process of identifying messaging, target audiences and objectives that AI doesn’t encompass.  

AI is not a replacement for the expertise of a PR professional - including their experience in knowing what works and doesn’t work with the media.  AI generated content poses a very real risk of an exponential amount of not very good content flooding the news media, with the result of making it even harder for companies to attract the attention of the media.