Bylined articles, thought leadership pieces, reports, press releases, blogs, and social posts. They can be created in minutes as AI accelerates content creation. But we must be conscious that speed alone doesn’t equal strategy or quality. For PR agencies and communications managers, this raises the question: How do we stay trusted storytellers when content supply is exploding, standards are changing beneath our feet and clients think we can create qualitative content within 5 minutes?
With the help of Perplexity I researched for this blog. I digested all the input, checked my thoughts and takeaways with ChatGPT, asked Grok what journalists say and talked with Tyde AI about internal processes. Below you will find my three takeaways on how AI-driven content generation is influencing PR.
How PR teams can maintain credibility amid AI content acceleration
Generative AI tools (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Mistral, Grok, and Claude) allow PR teams to brainstorm, draft, and iterate at unprecedented speed. For our clients, we can now launch campaigns faster, respond to trending news, and keep the content pipeline full. AI is a productivity powerhouse. No more staring at blank pages; we can brainstorm ten angles in ten minutes. But at the same time, speed breeds sameness. When everyone uses the same tools, language risks becoming homogenized. Journalists who are already flooded with pitches, will detect AI content from a mile away. And brands relying too heavily on the speed of AI for their content creation risk losing their authentic voice and their credibility. At Progress Communications we see AI as our co-pilot, not a replacement. We think that successful PR teams integrate AI into their content operations while maintaining their storytelling DNA. But, those teams also need new ways of working together and we need stricter brand voice guidelines and quality control processes to ensure consistency, credibility and originality.
Journalists want higher-value pitches
AI can write press releases, blog posts, and social content, which means that everyone is sending more pitches than ever. Resulting in an overwhelming amount of content for journalists. On the other side: AI frees up time to focus on relationships and our consultancy role. Instead of spending hours on content creation, PR teams can now invest time and energy in relation building and in crafting excellent, super tailored, research-driven pitches. The kind of pitch that resonates with a journalist. The PR teams that don’t carefully fact-check and hyperpersonalize their content, will risk that journalists tune out or ignore (or more brutal: blacklist) agencies and brands that push poorly targeted, generic AI content. Journalists expect evidence, tailormade pitches, exclusivity, and context.
Trust, transparency, and ethics are the PR differentiators
With AI now generating vast amounts of content, trust has become the differentiator. Our clients and journalists want to know who wrote it, how it was created, and whether they can believe it. Agencies and brands who fact-check rigorously, are transparent about their sources but also have internal, editorial checks by senior staff can harness AI to build even greater credibility. As PR agencies we are the gatekeepers for our clients and we need to be super mindful of reputation damage. A single misstep can cause reputational damage. We need to be careful with intellectual property, misinformation, and plagiarism and implement AI governance frameworks that will help us to decide when and how to disclose AI involvement. But we also need to be clear to our clients that we need time in fact-checking and editorial validation. Because journalists expect PR professionals to act as information gatekeepers. An internal validation process ensures accuracy before anything reaches the newsroom. This mean that fact-checking templates, human verification and transparency need to be embedded in workflows. It also means that qualitative (AI) content isn’t always a timesaver (yet).
Written by : Stella Jansen – MD Progress Communications
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PS It took me an hour to formulate my thinking and to write this blog with the help of AI. I asked a colleague to evaluate my blog and give me feedback. The whole process to gather input, define angle, narrow it down, write and optimize the text took about 4 hrs.
First published by Plexus PR