On the second Monday of every month, PRSA offers “AI Pulse,” a briefing hosted by Ray Day, APR, that provides timely insights into the latest AI trends, tools, and developments. Learn how to stay ahead of an ever-evolving digital landscape here.
“Some of the best innovation in our business comes from those who have not yet been jaded by bureaucracy and conservative office policies, and that happens in higher ed,” said Ray Day, APR, immediate past chair of PRSA and host of “AI Pulse.”
During the Nov. 9 session, Day, vice chair of Stagwell, executive chair of Allison Worldwide, asked a panel of university professors and students to share their perspectives on AI’s growing role in public relations.
“We are integrating it either within individual classes or within topics in our classes,” said Erika Schneider, an assistant professor of public relations at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. “We’re trying to reflect the industry demand, so we go through different simulations and workshops to figure out how we should best be using the tools.”
Schneider’s research has found that journalism students are more skeptical of press releases labeled as being written by AI. Journalists who received an AI-generated press release “perceived the release as less credible, and the PR professional who sent it as less credible,” she said.
Sophie Chaitovitz, a senior studying public relations and political science at Syracuse, is director of development at its student-run PR firm, Hill Communications.
“The student and junior-career perspective is a lot more positive than you would think,” she said. “The most important takeaway is using AI as a thought partner instead of a mindless tool that’s replacing our strategic thinking as PR professionals.”
‘Embracing AI big-time’
At the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, “We’re all-in on AI,” said Fred Cook, Fellow PRSA, director of its Center for Public Relations. “We’re embracing it big-time, and teaching it in every class.”
Knowing how to use the best AI tools is “a skill that our students are going to have to have” to land good jobs and enjoy strong careers, Cook said.
The most powerful AI breakthrough for communicators is the “synthetic audience,” he said.
“For PR, it’s the ability to create a focus group or a sense of how a message is going to land with a particular audience … in a matter of minutes, when you are in a crisis, or when you’re launching a product,” Cook said.
Ada Li, a junior studying PR and advertising at USC, and a research associate at the Center for Public Relations, offered some AI caveats.
“Using AI to create your first draft is not the greatest idea,” she said. “And if you don’t feed it a certain amount of data, it’ll come up with generic answers that limit your creativity, and the vibrancy or quality of your response.”
When creating an AI agent that can make decisions and take actions autonomously, “give them a lot of context, a lot of limitations, and a lot of expectations, almost like you’re training an intern,” Li said.
Helping students succeed
Robert Judin teaches sports branding at the University of Florida, where he founded Two Bits Creative, a creative agency that helps student-athletes develop their personal brands.
“We are very pro-AI here,” he said. “For us, it’s more about AI facilitating creativity in content and comms than it is being the creativity and being the content and the comms.” With AI, “You can create great creative content, great campaigns, much faster.”
By incorporating AI and different large language models (LLMs) into the agency’s workflows, “we’re putting students in a position to succeed,” Judin said.
Tyler Cohen, a junior studying information systems at the University of Florida, heads AI and analytics at Two Bits Creative.
The agency uses AI to “automate workflows that would take a lot more time otherwise,” he said. “To save us money, I created a CRM [customer-relationship-management tool] that’s able to track all of our projects and our assignments. AI allows you to do things like that.”
‘Rev up the engines’
As public opposition to AI and data centers grows, Day asked whether communicators should slow down their use of the technology.
“The companies leading this charge have a serious responsibility to investigate and determine the safety of these products before they’re released,” Cook said. “As far as people in the PR industry are concerned, we need to rev up the engines. The more that students learn about AI, the better off they’re going to be in their careers. Better get on board than be left behind.”
As Schneider put it, “You can be ethically cautious, but there’s still an obligation to understand the tools shaping your industry.”
Photo credit: Gorodenkoff
