On the second Monday of every month, PRSA offers “AI Pulse,” a briefing hosted by Ray Day, APR, PRSA’s 2026 immediate past chair, that provides timely insights into the latest AI trends, tools, and developments. Learn how to stay ahead of an ever-evolving digital landscape here.
AI is both “the opportunity of our time” and a growing source of public concern, said Ray Day, APR, during PRSA’s June 8 installment of “AI Pulse.” For communicators, the challenge is learning how to use the technology responsibly while helping organizations navigate its risks.
Recent news headlines have warned that “The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam” (The Wall Street Journal), “The ‘Techlash’ Against AI Is Here” (Rolling Stone), and “Silicon Valley Confronts AI’s Big PR Problem” (Bloomberg).
As the Journal reported, “In one poll after another in recent weeks, respondents have overwhelmingly voiced concerns about AI,” as “a wave of anger has brought protests, swayed election results and spurred isolated acts of violence.” Job cuts attributed to AI have deepened Americans’ mistrust of the technology, the paper reported.
For PR professionals, “It’s important to come up with some rules of the road for how you’re engaging with AI,” panelist Amanda Carl-Pratt said during “AI Pulse,” PRSA’s monthly livestream hosted by Day, vice chair of Stagwell, executive chair of Allison Worldwide, and PRSA’s 2026 immediate past chair.
“The first rule of engagement is to own the output,” said Carl-Pratt, who leads communications at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI-development lab. “The buck stops with the human. The AI can draft, it can edit, it can optimize, but the human always has to be behind the final product.”
Communicators “bear the responsibility of making sure that the material we’re putting forward is free of errors, free of hallucinations, free of misinformation, regardless of what tools generated it,” she said.
When using artificial intelligence in their work, PR pros should also “fight cognitive offloading, which is when people defer to AI outputs without fully evaluating them,” she said. “You need to use AI as your collaborative partner” to challenge your hypotheses, poke holes in a crisis strategy or simulate stakeholder push-back.
“But never let it replace your original strategic thinking or critical judgment,” she said. “Make sure that the things that make us uniquely good at what we do are not being offloaded to AI.”
Carl-Pratt urged communicators to disclose their use of AI and avoid misleading audiences.
“As people who are responsible for company reputations, it’s important that we always operate with radical transparency,” Carl-Pratt said. “If you’re using AI to inform your message, you should say that.”
When using AI, communicators should also protect the privacy, security and copyrights of their company’s data, she said.
‘Irresponsible’ for communicators not to use AI
“We have to be able to stand behind the outputs that we produce,” said panelist Steve Mnich, head of product communications at Anthropic.
Communicators need to understand AI’s strengths and weaknesses, he said. “Where is it less factual? Where is it more likely to hallucinate?”
At the same time, Mnich said, for public relations practitioners it’s “irresponsible to keep AI to the side, to not lean in” to the technology “and hope at some point that you’re going to figure it out.”
Mnich said the communications professionals he sees using AI “the best, who are really thoughtful about the pros and cons of it, who are leaning in and taking the responsibility of being engaged with AI” are studying the models and seeing what they can do.
“Without that hands-on experience on a day-to-day basis,” Mnich said, “you’re going to continue to see two paths within the communications industry, and within companies: Teams that are really leaning in, experimenting, and asking AI to do more and more work. And teams that are slow, that are lagging.”
As new and improved versions of AI continue to roll out, “the teams that are leaning in and being encouraged to lean in” have a greater “ability to stand out,” he said. “It’s an interesting re-frame of what responsibility means.”
The discussion ultimately framed responsible AI use not as a reason for communicators to avoid the technology, but as a reason to engage with it more.
Illustration credit: Antony Weerut
