Tables turned: The potential use and perils of ChatGPT for PR practitioners

The news on ChatGPT is all over the place now. While some are criticizing the tool for its limitations in use, others consider the solution a threat to content creators, PR professionals included. The ChatGPT created by Open AI holds a huge impact on both visual and writing content creation, as well as the risk of replacing content writers in the industry. In this article, we will discuss the promise of generative AI, ChatGPT, and their perils, the impact of these tools on the PR industry, and the ways to be proactive rather than reactive using AI.

Communications Engineering: Bridging PR practices and AI tools

AI tools are currently being commonly used among the PR community — sentiment analysis, pitching list creation, or content generation. PR practitioners, however, mostly rely on past experience, their relationships with journalists, or research conducted by team members to help better pitch content. Still, according to the PRophet research, the major part (54%) says they rely on a PR tech platform and believe AI has the potential to change the way PR is practised. Hence, many PR professionals now believe AI is worth exploring to support their roles and then have more time on higher-value tasks. Using AI can empower modern PR professionals to be more predictive, productive, and performative — in other words, to become communications engineers.

Communications engineers sit at the intersection of science and art. With the further usage of AI tools, communications engineers will create, manage, and disperse narratives using data to backstop instinct. And, will further deploy software to predict journalist interest and sentiment, generate and regenerate content, identify trends, surface and counter misinformation, and safeguard truth and facts.

ChatGPT on the rise: The usage and impact of the tool

ChatGPT is a world-changing technology also backed by a myth of overnight success. The AI tools provide access to data and can largely predict semantic structures, making coherent and logical texts. Even though the solution misses voice yet — a trait only humans hold — it can still produce headlines for an ad, do the first draft, or help with the “blank page problem.”

Yet, chat GPT certainly has limitations. It is not a deep fact-checking platform nor a replacement for one’s point of view. Besides, since ChatGPT is a predictive technology and its answers are based on the questions humans asked, the tool is subject to vast plagiarism.

The usage of this solution is yet to be explored, but its impact on the PR industry is undeniable. The solution stands as a reliable “co-pilot” to the PR people, providing assistance in generating, regenerating, or formulating the content. While the plagiarism issue might be covered by using the tool with further intelligence on top of it, the solution might be of great help to the specialists in the field.

Summing Up

AI tools, along with widely-known ChatGPT, allow PR practitioners to dive into strategic and creative tasks, while also taking over the time-consuming ones and providing texts the professionals can elaborate on. And, even though, many fear that AI will once take over their jobs, the human replacement is nowhere near — the notion of humans and their creative originality remains crucial. AI cannot replace judgement.

This post included highlights from the PRophet webinar on the promise and perils of ChatGPT for PR Pros.