The impact of AI in PR and marketing agencies has resulted in both revolution and chaos. Communicate Influence talks to AI expert Jacob Robinson about how AI will impact PR and marketing agencies. Jacob explains that AI tools can speed up work and productivity. But this only happens if you select the right tools and give them the right inputs—and have a clear understanding of the risks and limitations.
Jacob also shares some essential advice on how to work with AI.
Jacob is a Consultant with APEX Public Relations, Toronto. One of his areas of responsibility is overseeing how APEX implements AI, and how the agency advises clients on the use of AI.
At APEX, Jacob lends his support across several business functions, including business development, communication marketing, digital and internal communication. A recent honours alumnus of Humber College, Toronto, Ontario, Jacob is already developing a reputation for elevating the teams and organizations he is a part of, and is recognized as a problem-solver and integrator of lessons.Â
2023 - a year of revolution and chaos
CI: Jacob, welcome and thanks for your time!
How would you describe 2023? The year of the AI revolution, the year we became star-struck with AI, or somewhere in-between?
Jacob: 2023 was a year of revolution, AND chaos.Â
I predict we'll continue to see opportunities and displacement on a global scale. Many jobs with repetitive tasks will inevitably be lost to automation.
This being said, good copywriters should be safe. Here's why.
Content that resonates requires human touch and understanding
Industry wisdom and preferred terms aren’t easy to fine
Research skills, strategic oversight, industry wisdom, etc, will remain evergreen, given the issues with veracity of AI.
The impact of AI in PR and marketing
CI: How do you see the impact of AI in PR and marketing playing out in remainder of 2024?
Jacob: We will see more and more multi-modal AI capabilities. We can expect a marketplace of customized GPTs. There will be a rise of AI safety institutes and centres to educate and inform people. What we have now are the worst versions of the AI. It will continue to get smarter and sharper to, I suspect, the point of superintelligence. We should look at integrating redlines for safety.Â
Massive step forward in the power of marketing
What we're witnessing isn't just AI advancement. It is a massive step forward in the power of marketing—around what’s happening and where we’re going.
Fully-automated AI marketing campaigns
AI will likely be capable of generating fully fledged campaigns less than a year from now. Jasper.ai is showing promise in this realm.
AI will become more commercialized, more integrated into workflows and normalized, and more customized and tailored to the user’s needs.
How PR and marketing agencies can approach AI
CI:: Tell us how the APEX team is progressing with AI. Has the agency developed a process for reviewing and introducing new tools or is the approach less formal, with staff being able to discover and use the tools they want?
Jacob: Our in-house AI Policy is developed by HR to guide responsible use, possible use use cases, things to watch out for, etc.
We as practitioners own our decisions. We communicate our intent and progress frequently. Review and approval are standard, AI or not.
I typically attend webinars every other week on average, with plenty of news monitoring in between. We actively actively get ahead of industry changes, as this helps us secure new business and meet the needs of our clients.
Favourite and recommended AI tools
CI: What AI tools is APEX using, and how?
Jacob: We're experimenting. In 2024, we'll see a lot more deployment, adoption, and marketplace—people training their own GPTs.
AI’s memory is also improving at an incredible rate. In early 2023, ChatGPT could only remember up to a 3000-word window with a knowledge base up to 2021. After a few months’ time, ChatGPT can now remember up to 128000-word window (the number of words in the average book).
We want to treat AI as a conversational tool. The AI will work with you if you feed it strong input.
Examples of AI tools
Use AI tools for:
Brainstorming
Getting a second opinion
Overcoming writer’s block
Taking meeting notes
Generating lists of questions
Recognizing blind spots
Podcast editing.
1. An alternative to Google search:
Perplexity.ai - reveals all its sources, and takes search results and wraps them up for you.
2. A note-taker/summarizer:
Fireflies—note that Fireflies is advanced and can also gauge sentiment in a meeting, who spoke for what length of time, etc.
3. Shortening copy/identifying patterns/trends:
4. Copywriting:
New free and paid-for writing tools are arriving on the market every month. Some we like are:
Wordtune
Rytr.
5. Human-like conversation:
Pi.ai (developed by Inflection.ai)
ChatGPT—analysis/parsing key words in large-volume text.
6. Headlines
HeadlinesAI—Helps you think about things in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of; it can make something cheeky or amusing.
Coschedule.com's Headline Studio.
7. Design and stock imagery:
Midjourney
DALLE-3
Canva (built-in extension, not a bot).
When not to use AI
Don't use AI for:
Fact-checking
Using the output as a final draft or final copy. For example, I’ll refine, feed into another AI or apply my own human edits (or delegate to another human if I don’t have the time or they are better-suited to speak to the topic). Everyone in PR, marketing, or working as a copywriter should be taking this approach.
The best advice about working with AI
CI: What advice do you give to agencies, inhouse staff, and freelancers working with AI?
Jacob: Credibility and reputation are priceless. Never take AI's output at face value. Always conduct your own research and due dilligence. Double-check linkage with different sources before submitting any work.
As an example, ChatGPT falsely named Australian Mayor Brian Hood as a guilty party who had served time in prison. ChatGPT falsely stated Hood had been involved in a foreign bribery scandal connected to a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia in the early 2000s - obviously NOT the mayor.
Always keep an eye open for privacy issues, hallucinations, and the limited number of tokens for some free versions (less tokens = limited ability to train AI).
Premium versions can be worth it to train the AI more effectively. But evaluate tools before subscribing. There are so many options now. Pick the ones which are right for you. Quality over quantity.
Assume the Reddit rule: if you wouldn’t feel comfortable putting it on Reddit, don’t feed it into a chatbot. When information is out there, there is no taking it back.
Anticipate the information you share or input into any AI tool is being used to train models.
Never input any proprietary or company-sensitive information into it (you can get fired for doing so).
If you’re not 100 percent certain – ask Human Resources for the company AI policy and how you can join the conversation.
No AI tool or platform is one-size-fits-allÂ
Moving into 2024 we'll see a lot more multi-model functionality.
This means you can 'input anything to get anything'. For example, you can Input text to generate sound; speak to it (not unlike Siri or Alexa) to generate an image; or get it to pull insights for you.
AI will even write programming code – you can make your own apps or games in just a few simple steps, in under 20 minutes probably.
You can transform a still into motion, pixel by pixel.
Use it as a tone copier, a document stacker, a prompt reviewer (you feed a prompt, get the GPT to review and shorten the prompt, then use the shorter prompt to get even better output).
Disruption is not new
People are naturally resistant to change and disruption, especially with technology. We saw it with personal computing, then the calculator, then with social media. The fight-or-flight response to something new that we don’t understand is completely normal.
Use AI responsibly and with intent.
Do you have questions about AI for Jacob? Send them to us and we'll forward them to him and publish the answers soon.
Read part-two of Jacob's Q&A and part three.
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