As a professional in the marketing and PR industry, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is already starting to revolutionise our field, offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance creativity, streamline content creation, and improve crisis communications. However, this rapid advancement has also brought about significant ethical and legal concerns, requiring us to tread carefully and responsibly. This caused me and Will to say – we should discuss this on the podcast and highlight some of the things that are good and some of the things we should maybe be considering.
AI has emerged as a powerful tool in our marketing arsenal, assisting us in generating first drafts, saving valuable time, and augmenting human ingenuity. It has already enabled us to speedily produce captivating blog posts, compelling press releases (albeit a tad basic), and engaging social media content plans. However, we must remember that AI is not meant to replace human creativity; it is a means to amplify it and become the assistant – it isn’t the final version.
While AI offers undeniable benefits, it’s crucial to acknowledge the potential for misuse and weaponisation and I touched on this. A recent instance involved a BBC journalist creating a custom GPT capable of crafting convincing scam texts. Such incidents highlight the need for robust ethical guidelines and legal frameworks governing AI usage.
On the other hand, AI’s potential to enhance creativity is immense. It can generate engaging blog titles, catchy campaign names, and insightful audience personas, further influencing storyboarding, image generation, and video production. As marketers and PR professionals, we must embrace these tools to drive innovation and effectiveness.
In this rapidly evolving AI landscape, staying informed about the latest advancements is paramount. OpenAI’s release of custom chat GPTs exemplifies the potential AI holds for our industry. However, we must remain vigilant, acknowledging the ethical and legal implications of these advancements and that is what we wanted to cover in this episode.
AI’s influence in marketing and PR is already transformative, offering both immense benefits and some significant challenges not least people worrying. While AI empowers us to enhance efficiency and creativity, we must navigate this complex landscape with prudence and ethical consideration.
I hope you enjoy our latest episode.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
