Will PR be more or less relevant in the age of AI Rising?

One of the questions PR professionals are wrestling with is whether our profession will be more or less important as Artificial Intelligence gains further ground.

AI can already perform many tasks traditionally assigned to PR professionals and with time it will get better and be able to more things.

AI, however, is not AGI – Artificial General Intelligence – and that separates the machines and code from humans. AI can better when doing specific tasks but you still need AGI to pull disparate facts, impressions and nuanced information together to come up with creative ideas or plain solid advice.

These are categories that PR should continue to lay claim to and do even better, with the help of AI.

The jewel in PR’s crown should be advisory work as now, more than every the management of corporations need this service.

This is because AI and its ability to create deep fakes has dramatically increased the potency of online fakery. An example is the image of the Pope wearing a puffer jacket that went viral around the world and was viewed 4 million times, with many believing that the Pontiff was really into hipster winter couture.

The other element that corporations and brands will face is the speed of events unfolding because of the combination of apps and social media. As Bloomberg reports, the runs on Silicon Valley Bank was largely caused by a combination of banking apps and social media, one feeding on another.

PR counsel is now more important than ever for business leaders to navigate their way through this minefield littered with apps, social media, super fast chatbots and Ai of one description or another.

The better PR professionals are able to provide them with the required advice because of the Contextual Intelligence inherent in any seasoned PR pro. Contextual Intelligence is the ability to understand, interpret, and respond appropriately to different contexts, situations, and environments. It involves several cognitive and social skills such as judgement, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, cognitive complexity, sensitivity to different contexts, especially when it comes to politics and religion in Indonesia, and creativity.

Sure, AI like Chat GPT can also provide contextual evidence but it can only go so far. Don’t take my word for it, here’s what Chat GPT has to say about its power to provide contextual intelligence:

“…it’s important to note that ChatGPT’s responses are generated based on patterns it has learned from the text data it was trained on and may not always reflect the full context of a conversation. Therefore, it’s important to exercise critical thinking and judgement when interpreting the responses generated by ChatGPT.”

So there you have it, the secret to remaining relevant to your clients in the age of AI Rising: Develop you contextual intelligence as a superpower, enhance it with Ai and stake your claim on the management table.