Why I'm Not Scared of AI: Embracing Technology in Digital PR

AI seems to be everywhere at the moment - in the news and all over our social media feeds.

Many people are trying to ignore the buzz around Artificial Intelligence but if you do believe the hype it seems to be a dystopian robot threatening to replace all our jobs and do better work than any human ever could.

Some commentators go even further, warning AI could be the beginning of the end for mankind. They fear it will lead to Terminator style robots set on vapourizing humans and taking over the world.

Even a recent BBC report stated that Artificial Intelligence could soon replace 300 million full-time jobs around the world.

Many are reporting it won’t be long until artificial intelligence takes over a whole host of jobs across an array of different industries - including PR agencies and SEO agencies.

But despite all the gloom around AI I for one am not worried. Let me explain. It’s pretty safe to say that bots won’t be replacing emergency jobs like medical specialists or the police, and those in trade industries such as plumbers, any time soon.

Yes, there is talk of AI displacing jobs like marketing, sales, communications, and digital PR.

But those of us in white collar jobs should not feel at all threatened by the thought of some software taking away our work and livelihoods.

In fact, these office-based jobs require a whole host of human values to keep the cogs spinning - and how is AI going to replicate these types of services?

Digital PR revolves around building connections with clients, journalists and media outlets, nurturing these relationships to build trust, friendship, credibility and assurance.

It’s these human values, integral to digital PR, which cannot be replaced by a bot. However, this isn’t to say that Artificial Intelligence cannot be used to a brand’s advantage when crafting out the right digital PR campaign.

Even SEO, which is usually perceived as a less creative more technical discipline than PR, still needs human oversight and direction to master.

Using AI to help with certain tasks can be really beneficial - it can save time when it comes to research which can instead be put into other, more creative aspects of a campaign.

One good example is to ask AI to carry out a series of maths equations (which for many of us words folk I'm sure we’d rather avoid doing). Say if you’re in the food sector planning some Easter based campaigns, and want to work out how many creme eggs will fit inside the Grand Canyon? No doubt that will take some serious time to work out yourself. But ask AI and the answer will be handed to you in just a few seconds (the answer is 491 billion for those of you curious).

Artificial Intelligence can also be used to spark creativity. Marketers can ask AI to suggest ideas for a certain campaign and then use those as a spring board for their own ideation. AI is also a useful tool for a whole host of things such as translations, data analysis and refining crisis communications.

But we can confidently say that although we can use bots to assist PR campaigns to our advantage, AI is certainly not going to be able to replace human relationships, our natural ability to write effectively and knowing how to grab the right audience, all of which digital PR relies so heavily on.

If you’d like to hire a team of living, breathing humans to help with your next PR campaign please do get in touch. We guarantee not to vapourize you and kick-start Armageddon.