Pitfalls, Successes, and how PR professionals can optimise their workflow
Generative AI was the standout trend of 2023, with digital marketers racing to keep up with rapidly changing and updating AI technologies. Those slow to adopt AI risked falling behind, with the AI skills gap widening drastically as industry leaders rolled out AI optimisations in their working.
With a vast array of technologies available, the responsibility fell to users to navigate best practices and practical implementations of AI. From hands-on AI experimentation to creation of proprietary tools, the process of AI integration risked being a stab in the dark without proper strategic planning.
To counter this, the Digital PR team at Distinctly plotted a course of long-term, testing, learning, and integration over an initial six month launch, summarising their findings in the Integrating AI Processes into Digital PR whitepaper. This way, they could establish structure to the initiative, allowing them to fully explore the benefits — and the pitfalls — of using generative AI to support their output.
Maximising your AI use by knowing its limits
Although it may be tempting to use AI for every part of our work as Digital PRs, the value of human touch can’t be understated. Our capacity for empathy and intuition is far more complex and nuanced than the limits of AI, meaning we won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon.
- Be vigilant of AI bias
We aren’t without our flaws, and AI isn't either. Limited training data can lead AI to "hallucinate", resulting in incorrect information, generation of fake websites and data sources, and falsely interpreted data analysis.
For example, we have observed instances of outputs influenced by gender bias; Amazon trained an AI recruiting tool on successful employee CVs, which resultingly excluded women – a reflection of male dominance across the tech industry.
Thus, Digital PR professionals must be extremely vigilant of both the outputs and inputs of AI.
- Beware of copyright risks with image generation
Digital PR professionals may encounter copyright challenges when using AI-generated images. While technically AI images can’t be copyrighted, the training datasets used by AI image generators often contain copyrighted material. As a result, we’ve seen high-profile copyright infringement cases such as Getty Images’ suing of Stable Diffusion, claiming that copyrighted images were used without permission to train the software.
- Set boundaries
To avoid misuse of AI, users must improve their understanding of AI’s true capabilities – and limits. AI can be used in a multitude of ways, but that doesn’t always mean it should be.
Accordingly, all industry professionals looking to implement AI into their working must undergo proper training on AI best practices. The onus is on management to instate a robust AI policy, to avoid potential misuse and start off on the right foot.
Practical applications of AI in Digital PR
While AI isn’t suited to all aspects of day-to-day marketing, it can significantly enhance the efficiency with which tasks are carried out by optimising certain processes.
Time and accuracy are critical in the fast-moving world of Digital PR, with industry leaders constantly looking out for new time-saving measures to keep up with the pace.
- Kickstart ideation and break writer’s block
AI can be a huge help in the ideation phase of campaign production. With the right prompts, AI can offer you a springboard to escape a mental block, whether you’re brainstorming new angles for a press release or crafting engaging email subject lines.
AI can be a great supportive tool for quick-fire ideation. Simply feed in initial ideas and let AI offer various angles for refining and expanding.
- Produce content faster – but not necessarily better
While AI may not yet be able to produce a finished article with little to no amends required, AI can be a great starting point for creating first drafts of press releases or email pitches.
By using AI as a springboard, PR professionals can save masses of time by speeding up the writing process. Needless to say, no piece of content created by AI will be the finished article, so human editing will always be required.
Tools such as Ahrefs’ AI writing tools can be a huge help in creating content plans or first drafts, letting you spend more time on refining and editing the final product.
- Get to the point with AI-enhanced data analysis
AI is particularly helpful in data analysis. It can make vast amounts of data digestible by picking out key points for a story, sifting through irrelevant information to identify key trends. This makes data analysis far more accessible and efficient, simplified by AI allowing you to focus on storytelling.
Use AI – but don’t rely on it
AI can be hugely useful in boosting efficiency, but it’s no replacement for human creativity.
AI is as flawed as its human creators, so awareness of its pitfalls is essential. However, through practice and properly implemented AI policies, AI can be an invaluable tool in enhancing your workflows.
About Chloe Chamberlain
Chloe Chamberlain has over three years’ experience in Digital PR working with clients across the globe. She has been part of Distinctly’s AI Research and Development team since it was founded in Summer 2023, correctly predicting the integration of generative AI into SERPs.
