How is AI Being Used in Public Relations in 2024?

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important tool for public relations professionals in today's fast-paced world. We gathered insights from PR professionals, including PR managers and communications specialists, on how they use AI to improve their work. From streamlining work with AI tools to utilizing Google's Gemni for creative ideas, discover the 16 innovative ways these professionals are enhancing their work processes with AI.

Streamline PR Work with Tools

In the dynamic landscape of PR, AI emerges as a potent ally that can be a tool for revolutionizing our approaches—but one must be careful not to become too reliant on AI. I use AI tools to streamline my work, such as Grammarly, to check my sentence structure and tone of voice in real-time. Otter has also been a fantastic tool for transcribing interviews and meetings.

Utilizing AI has allowed me to regain some more time that I can put towards strategizing. While AI is a great partner in PR, I believe it is important not to view it as a possible replacement for the human factor of a very audience-focused profession.

Maury Chasteau-Simien, Senior PR Manager (North America), Cake.com

Support Idea Generation

AI is invaluable to me for my everyday tasks. I use ChatGPT specifically to help me generate ideas when I have trouble doing them by myself, kind of like an example generator.

Sometimes, you just run out of ideas when you need to write an article or a post, right? So, I tell the AI the broad outline of what I need to write about and describe the angle and emotion I want to convey, and when I get my text, I rewrite and add my expert insights and quotes. It's not AI-generated—every word is written by me; the biggest help that I get from the AI, I guess, is the idea for the general flow of the story—what comes after what.

For journalist pitches, sometimes I use AI to help me generate various subject lines, which I then, once again, get inspired by and craft something myself. Usually, the subject lines or titles I come up with seem too long or too vague for me, so I ask ChatGPT if it's a good title and to tell me what the article or email is about just from reading the title. If the answer satisfies me, I go ahead with it; it's kind of like a preliminary quality control.

If you are a competent PR manager or a specialist, you should never rely on AI to write the entire text (unless you've got some magical prompt that makes AI write like a real human being)—at this point, everyone in the media and the internet knows how AI-generated texts look, and even one slip-up can result in your reputation being ruined as you will be known as a person who tries to pass AI-generated content off as original, real content written by you.

Augustinas Milaknis, junior PR manager, Ratepunk

Refine Expert Opinions

Ways I'm leveraging AI include utilizing it to refine and enhance the articulation of expert opinions for media content. In the world of journalism and corporate communications, it's not uncommon to engage with industry specialists whose expertise is invaluable.

However, they may not always be adept at conveying their knowledge in a manner that's both compelling and accessible to a broader audience. This is where AI steps in. By using advanced language models, I can take the raw, often complex insights from these professionals and transform them into polished, reader-friendly content.

Olga Natalchenko, pr manager, Wiserbrand

Use AI as a Test Audience

Using AI to help research, brainstorm, draft, and edit is old news. Those are all still valuable uses, of course, but if you haven't mastered these with AI yet, you're already behind.

These days, I use AI as a test audience. Prompting the AI to act as different personas—internal stakeholders, customers, press, competitors, etc.—helps find blind spots, validate (or invalidate) assumptions, and strengthen the content.

But as always, it's on the humans to do the final fact-checking and decision-making.

Alie Coolidge, PR & Communications Director, Deeplocal

Make Targeted Research Easier

Speaking frankly, I was opposed to using AI in my daily work as a communications specialist for quite some time. I couldn't see the value in AI-generated texts because they lack a human presence and experience. Public relations is all about building connections between people through personalized messages. First, a PR specialist gets on the right foot with a journalist, and then the journalist communicates with the audience. People trust people.

Nonetheless, I managed to find the best application for AI in PR—conducting research. Whenever I need to find information regarding the media landscape in a specific country, journalists who cover the target topic, the latest publications of a particular journalist, or data for my pitch, AI helps me out. The best thing is that you can detail your request as much as you'd like to receive the necessary information. So, if you don't know where to start digging for relevant information for the campaign you are working on, or if you're looking for inspiration to start writing, go for AI. Of course, it won't do the whole job for you (and you wouldn't like that), but it's a worth-trying tool to start your research.

Viktoriia Khutorna, Communications Specialist, promova

Adjust Written Global Correspondence

A very simple, but I think highly underrated, way I am using AI in my role as PR Manager is by using ChatGPT to ensure that my global correspondence is adjusted accordingly to each region's spelling or grammatical rules.

When managing clients or engaging with journalists across different continents, both your correspondence and press releases must be adjusted according to the appropriate linguistic style. It may seem small, but ignoring small spelling conventions when chatting with a journalist in the US when you are from the UK could make the difference between landing a client their dream link or being ignored.

While it might seem a bit dramatic, it comes down to professionalism, and if you don't show this small level of care, it could potentially put off media connections and potential clients alike. Plus, whatever you can do to make a journalist's life easier should never be ignored, and saving them from having to pop in or remove 'o's or 'u's can go a long way to ingratiating yourself to an overworked writer.

This is where ChatGPT comes into play, and I use it to help me cross-check any work I do that I have to send across the pond. Take the differences between UK and US English - the spelling discrepancies between words like 'enrollment' and 'enrolment,' or 'fulfill' and 'fulfil' can be hard to spot even when coupling your own spell checking with that of an inbuilt checker.

AI, like ChatGPT, acts as a fail-safe layer to catch any oversights that my spellcheck or I might miss, making it extremely invaluable when I'm working with people in both the US and UK. It also helps eliminate the need for me to be constantly toggling my spell-check settings, saving me precious time over the day to focus on the more strategic, creative parts of PR that require my full attention and creativity.

Georgia O'Brien-Perry, Digital PR Manager, Bulldog Digital Media

Simplify Media Monitoring and Analysis

As a PR manager, I mainly use AI because it is a very dynamic field, and it provides so many tools and platforms to make PR-related work more efficient.

We use AI tools in media monitoring and analysis, as well as in content creation. Having AI on your side is like having a person who never stops and always provides productive results. When an individual does media monitoring, there are chances of errors, but when you use AI for media monitoring, not a single important news item will be left unexplored. AI media monitoring tools provide 24/7 internet scanning, social media automation, trend analysis, and news outlets to catch any mention of our clients or topics.

AI can convert mountains of data into logical reasoning, which provides ease in understanding trends and audience psychology. With that data, you can analyze what kind of content your audience likes to read and their sentiments. This helps us stay one step ahead of others, crafting responses or strategies based on real-time insights.

It's kind of like having a crystal ball, but instead of magic, it's all algorithms and machine learning doing the heavy lifting. It makes our job a lot more informed and proactive.

Nikki Jain, Founder & CEO, THE SPROUT PR

Personalize Outreach with AI Assistance

It's easier than ever to find journalists and spam them with pitches. Personalized outreach has always been more effective, and now AI makes it a lot easier. Instead of composing individual emails or cutting, pasting, and customizing, I can give AI an email template and detailed information about each journalist, their bylines, and previous contact I've had with them—all of which I keep in a spreadsheet. AI writes my emails for me, and all I have to do is review each one and hit send. I still make lots of little revisions, but it's a lot easier. I make fewer mistakes, and there's way less context-switching.

Elliott Brown, Marketing Leader, Cache Financials

Enhance PR Productivity and Creativity

Leveraging AI in public relations offers significant benefits, enhancing productivity, effectiveness, and creativity across various tasks. While AI and automation provide valuable efficiencies, it's crucial to recognize them as tools complementing human ingenuity, not replacements.

AI can generate compelling content, streamline processes, and analyze data, enabling PR professionals to focus on strategic planning and innovation. By infusing human creativity, empathy, and strategic foresight, we can drive meaningful results while staying data-driven.

AI aids in media monitoring, predictive analytics, data analysis, content optimization, and personalized communication, enhancing PR efforts and ensuring relevance in a dynamic landscape. AI-driven platforms optimize outreach strategies, boosting media relations and coverage opportunities. Ultimately, AI empowers us to refine our approaches and achieve greater impact while preserving the essence of human expertise in public relations.

Marco Genaro Palma, Chief Marketing Officer, PRLab

Inspire New Pitch Ideas

AI can be a great tool when I'm having one of those days where the creative juices aren't flowing, and I need a starting point. Lately, I've been using AI to review the top trending story angles in my clients' niches. I don't always use one of the topics from the list, but it does inspire new ideas and helps me come up with what I should pitch next.

Lydia Bagarozza, Publicist, Lydia Bagarozza LLC

Uncover Authentic Voices

We're using AI to help clients uncover their authentic voices, helping us craft pitches and storylines that genuinely connect, devise marketing strategies that resonate on a personal level, and unearth the profound, authentic messages our clients are destined to share. AI elevates our strategy beyond the conventional, positioning us as pioneers in a movement where our clients' voices do more than just reach ears—they stir souls, ignite inspiration, and lead with authority.

Beth Nydick, Media Specialist, Beth Nydick Media

Craft Impactful Messages

One way I utilize AI is by harnessing its capabilities to create a strong and impactful core message for clients. AI tools can analyze vast amounts of data to understand audience preferences, sentiments, and trends, allowing me to tailor the message to resonate effectively with the target audience. Additionally, AI can help in crafting compelling narratives by identifying key themes and language that are likely to resonate with the audience.

Jodi Brandstetter, Brand Positioning Coach

Personalize Media Outreach

As a PR Manager for a software development firm, we're leveraging AI to revolutionize our media outreach through personalized content creation and targeted media pitching. Our AI tools analyze journalists' preferences and past coverage to tailor our press releases and pitches, ensuring they resonate with each recipient's interests. This personalization extends to drafting content that aligns with our brand's voice and messaging, significantly reducing the time spent on manual creation.

One standout application of AI in our operations is the predictive analysis for optimal release timing. By examining historical data and industry trends, our AI identifies the best moments to distribute news, maximizing media pickup and audience engagement. A recent campaign for a new AI-powered software tool demonstrated the effectiveness of this strategy. We used AI to customize pitches for tech journalists, focusing on the software's benefits that are most relevant to their interests. The campaign achieved notable success, with increased coverage and engagement compared to our traditional approaches.

By integrating AI for personalized content and strategic timing, we've enhanced our PR efforts, ensuring our messages are both impactful and efficiently delivered. This approach has not only streamlined our processes but also significantly improved our media relations and coverage outcomes.

Ari Lew, CEO, Asymm

Support In-Depth Research

The most effective way we've seen AI is to use it for research. Since you use ChatGPT to search the web or even analyze specific web pages and documents, it's a great way to fill in the gaps, educate yourself, or find new trends and studies to use in your pitches or stories. AI, in my opinion, can't write a good story or even a good pitch, but it can narrow down a vast amount of research with its web-scraping and conditional logic abilities.

Carson Spitzke, Founder, Spitz Solutions

Automate Media List Creation

One way I use AI is through automating the process of creating media lists. I have been able to simplify my PR process by using AI algorithms that analyze data from social media, news articles, and online publications to identify individuals who are most likely to cover specific topics or industries. This automation process has saved time while enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of my media outreach efforts. Rather than focusing on the organizational logistics of finding relevant journalists, bloggers, and influencers, my PR team can focus on perfecting pitches.

Matias Rodsevich, Founder, PRHive

Gemini Boosts Creative Content

There are few tasks in our agency that do not involve AI. We use it to generate content ideas, find grammatical errors in large pieces of writing, and suggest captions for social media posts. As a smaller agency, this saves us many hours each week.

However, what has impressed me most recently is the creative abilities of Google's Gemini. With a detailed prompt about a specific client and their target customers, the AI was able to generate some really terrific ideas to help us build brand awareness for that business. It's a valuable tool when you feel like you have already exhausted your team's creativity or are unsure of how to integrate several different ideas. Despite the recent round of bad press, I believe Gemini will be a solid competitor to ChatGPT, which is better at manual tasks like proofreading.

Ebony Lewkovitz, Founder, Eden Communications