Has AI left the PR software industry behind?

Discussion is building about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the media and public relations (PR) in particular.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) recently published an in-depth report on the subject, raising the alarm on the inevitable impact AI will have on the industry.

Much talk centres around OpenAI’s Chat GPT. Its significance is that after years of industry marketeers talking up the impending AI revolution here is something that anyone can play with and see how AI really works.

But shouldn’t it have been the PR and communications software industry that first demonstrated the power of AI to media professionals?

Take this recent example – not one in Stephen Waddington’s list of AI-powered tools comes from the PR software world.

Is the existing PR and communications software industry about to be elbowed into obsolescence by generic AI apps or a new wave of pure-AI upstarts?

The reality is that PR software companies have been using AI, or so-called ‘machine learning’, for years with varying levels of success – and clearly varying levels of visibility (other than marketing puff).

But the industry seems to have lost the agenda. I believe in order to stay relevant the PR software industry needs to step up. It must illustrate how it is already using AI and how it intends to embrace the latest AI technology to help media professionals work smarter. Only this way can it avoid going the way of the dinosaurs.