At one PR industry breakfast two years ago, the mood was a little sullen. In the morning chatter, there was a feeling of when, not if, a not-quite-thinking-or-feeling-but-basically-prescient-robot would consume our industry’s most basic functions.
Unlike some sensationalist headlines, these conversations treated AI as cancerous, not apocalyptic. It was, colleagues thought, a technology that would eventually metastasise. Before long, it would cut out any superfluous tasks before taking away actual jobs.
The comparison to supermarkets and self-checkouts was bandied around a little too freely. The comparison feels right but is technically wrong entirely. In a twist of fate, self-checkouts and self-service machines are being rethought precisely because they’re clunky, slow and lack the rapidity of a breathing human being.
After using AI for six months now, it is far from the Skynet preamble some forewarned it would be. It is a master of existing information but cannot generate anything new or innovative. ChatGPT may help you with the starter for 10 press release templates or blog research, but it doesn’t deliver any meaningful, creative change.
Using it for real work for some time has been a fascinating reproach to the idea that the takeover is imminent. It is, in short, a tool no different than a spell checker or Grammarly. The latter is a valuable program that checks syntax, clarity and can make recommendations based on audiences.
But it is very much similar to a car’s lane-keeping assist (LKA) feature. A gentle nudge back against the wheel and a beep of the dashboard advising I’m slipping lanes do not herald the end of independent driving. Grammarly is not a substitute for basic competence.
AI, certainly in the workplace, is just a tool. The two most immediate challenges are two sides of the same problem. What is produced will often need to be rewritten, and the copy has a robotic, factual tinge devoid of an individual writer’s style, foibles, and charm.
There is an AI arms race: on an inverse curve is a technology that has increasingly advanced and effective plagiarism and AI detectors to flag entire documents. The help AI provides as a time-saving exercise becomes remarkably fruitless very quickly, especially if you work on the assumption – as you always should – that clients would spot a lazy lean into AI.
Younger and more junior staff members, as sure as they thrive from the benefit of learning from their more senior colleagues, need robust and repetitive core writing skills. That is as fundamental to the future of our industry as doctors being able to visually diagnose a patient without relying on Google.
PR practitioners have another tool at their disposal with AI. Until John Connor shows up with a Terminator in tow, this writer is happy that artificial intelligence will never be able to meaningfully replicate or replace human creativity with all its mad energy, blunders, and excitement.
