You Ask, I Answer: Generative AI and Public Relations, Part 5 of 5

In the fifth and final part of my interview with Stephanie Moore, we explore the future of AI in public relations and the crucial role of education and adaptation. You’ll gain valuable perspectives on fostering innovation, building successful partnerships between academia and the industry, and staying ahead of the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Discover the potential impact of AI on the PR job market and gain insights into the skills future PR professionals need to thrive. Watch now to prepare yourself for the exciting and transformative future of AI in public relations!

You Ask, I Answer: Generative AI and Public Relations, Part 5 of 5

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Christopher Penn: In today’s episode—this is the last part, part five of five, of an interview I did with Stephanie Moore of Kent State University about generative AI in public relations.

Stephanie Moore: Okay, so, in terms of encouraging that discovery and innovation, what strategies can educators and practitioners use to foster an environment of discovery and innovation?

Christopher Penn: Talk to your stakeholders first, the people who are in charge. Show them, “Here’s how this will save time, save money, or make money.” And if those are important to your stakeholders, they’ll go, “We want that. How much is it going to cost me? How soon can you get started?” Right? If you can get two out of three, people are on board. And then there is leadership mandate. “This is what we’re going to do. We have to do this, or we’re going to get left behind.”

For individuals, again, how—what you—you know, the way I tell people, “Here’s how you identify an AI use case in an organization.” One of the things you do—make you go, “I know”—that’s your AI use case. If you can figure out how to get AI to make you not have to do that as much every week, you will find AI an incredible companion because you’ve, like, “Hey, you handle this product. I don’t like doing my expense reports. I don’t like doing this client report. I don’t want to write that meeting summary.” Great. Get a machine to do it.

Stephanie Moore: Great, good advice. Any—any examples of successful partnerships or collaborative projects? And, again, I’m thinking in terms of academia and the industry. I don’t know if anything—

Christopher Penn: Yeah. I mean, we do things like workshops and trainings frequently. I do half- and full-day workshops where we show people, and then there’s hands-on labs, like, “By the time you leave here, you will have this.” So, when I was doing a recent thing at an architecture conference, and by the time people left, they had their own go/no-go, programmatic AI application, that will let them decide—

Christopher Penn: —that—you know—”should I even bid on this proposal or not?” They drop the proposal in, and it comes up with the score, says “yes” or “no.” You know, “Bid on this, you don’t bid on this. This—you know—it’s a good fit; it’s going to be a waste of your time.” The fact that people can get to that point in a six-hour workshop is amazing to them because they’re like, “I’m going to save so much time. I’m going to stop sending out proposals to half the companies that are no longer a good fit. My boss is going to love it,” and stuff like that.

So, that kind of—you know—collaborative teaching is so important. People have got to get hands-on time. And there’s a whole linear progression of—you know—starting with basic prompts, prompt structure, the 22 different styles of prompting and stuff, and you just teach them all these things until—and then work—you work—walk them through use cases. “Okay, tell me what you’re working on. Let me show you how we can infuse AI into part of that, if not the whole thing.”

Stephanie Moore: Excellent. A lot of use with podcast editing in my classes, so we’ll be playing with that.

Christopher Penn: Oh, yeah, it’s phenomenal for podcast editing and even excerpts. You give it a—you give it a closed-caption—the SRT file—and you say, “Identify the most impactful 30 seconds in this—in this episode. Tell me the timestamps,” and then you know how to edit right there.

Stephanie Moore: Perfect. All right. So, how do you stay current? And, or, how would you recommend—or advice you’d give—for someone to stay current on—on an industry that is moving this fast?

Christopher Penn: It depends on your purposes and goals, right? So, I—my job—my job to stay current involves reading, like, hundreds and hundreds of articles and social posts and academic papers. And, of course, I—

Christopher Penn: —use AI to summarize a lot of them so that I can get through them quickly. But that is because I need to know how the tools work under the hood. Most people don’t need that. So, staying current is more about joining communities of like-minded folks and sharing practices, sharing what’s working, trading stuff, to the extent that you’re permitted to.

Stephanie Moore: Excellent. Okay. We’re breezing right through this. And then now, we have to pull out our crystal ball, which—you know—this—this is always coming. This is a question that we always ask. But, what trends—what future trends do you foresee in the intersection of AI and PR?

Christopher Penn: Either the public relations industry adopts AI well and thoroughly, or it goes out of business because it is so good. These tools are so proficient that you look at what an agency does, for example—you know—what the work output you’re getting from an agency, and you look at what AI can do, and you’re like, “Why am I paying $20,000,$ 30,000 a month for something that a skilled employee with Google Gemini or ChatGPT can do for—”

Leanne Rand: —100 bucks a month.

Stephanie Moore: But there still needs to be the human element, right? I mean, you always need to be human to—to prompt it.

Christopher Penn: Yeah, it is. Yes, but you could do that. I foresee a lot of bringing things in-house, and a lot of agencies very much struggling to—to earn clients because the work that they do—a company will say, “Well, I can get AI to do that, and it’s going to be 70% of the quality. I’m okay with that because it’s—it’s 5% of the cost.”

Stephanie Moore: So, how do we, as educators in academia, how do we adapt to these trends to better prepare our students for future challenges and opportunities in this area?

Christopher Penn: They better know how to use AI. They better be very, very skilled at it. I have seen some really boneheaded things by some schools—you know—banning the use, prohibiting the use of it, like, that is so stupid. It’s like banning the use of calculators. Good luck getting your graduates hired. It is a necessary skill. And that same Work Trend Index report says that you need to use AI to prepare your students for support. Sixty-six percent of senior leaders said they would not make a hire of someone if they did not have AI skills, and 71% they would prefer a more junior person with AI skills over a more experienced person without.

Stephanie Moore: That’s excellent. I was going to ask that question: if you’ve—if you’ve observed a shift in the type of work that the PR—or graduates are getting—as a result of AI, and that answers that.

Christopher Penn: Here’s the biggest challenge graduates are going to face—and I need to wrap up very quickly.

Stephanie Moore: Very soon.

Christopher Penn: All the tasks that entry-level workers do, machines do better. And so, one of the biggest challenges that—that PR is going to face—every industry is going to face—is, how do you better prepare the entry-level workers to have jobs if there are jobs? And how are you going to deal with the staffing crisis you’re going to have in 10 years when there’s no bench for managers, directors, and VPs because those people aren’t employed by you, and they never grew up in your organization? When you trim away 80% of your entry-level staff, by definition, you’re trimming away 80% of the people who will eventually become executives.

Stephanie Moore: Okay. Well, in the interest of time, I have one final question. Anything else that you would like to add that we haven’t covered?

Christopher Penn: The big, uncomfortable message is for—and this is something I was having a chat with the CEO of a PR agency, literally yesterday, is he has a reputation for not being as technologically current as, maybe, it’s advertising compatriots. That has to change or the industry, as a whole, diminishes to a point where there’s not a lot of opportunity. And so, if the industry wants to thrive, it needs to get on board quickly because it is a language-based industry. And language models and language-based tools are exceptionally capable and are getting better by the day.

Previously, two years ago, what ChatGPT came out with was kind of dumb, right? It was not the world’s smartest application. People looked at it going, “Ha-ha, AI is never gonna replace us.” Today, it is better than your average employee by a substantial margin. Not better than the best people, but there are very few best people. It is better than the average person, and there’s a lot of average people, by definition. And that is only getting better and better and better with every iteration.

These models upgrade every four months. Are you improving your skills by leaps and bounds every four months? If you’re not, machines are going to consume more and more of the tasks that you do.

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You Ask, I Answer: Generative AI and Public Relations, Part 5 of 5

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