A recent article predicted artificial intelligence will generate 90 percent of all online content by 2025. Another news article revealed editors with the popular CNET tech site have already used AI to produce news articles.
Back in 2020, I wrote an article for Forbes exploring this topic, titled “Artificial Intelligence in PR: Is it Science Fiction?” You can read the entire article by clicking on that link, but if you’re short on time, here was my prediction from 2020.
AI won’t succeed with PR because news happens too quickly. During my time running the PR campaign for the popular weight loss program, Noom, I learned how quality data helps AI. It helps the machine learn, grow and predict overtime. Machine learning can’t learn without quality data.
PR and journalism are nowhere near gathering this kind of big data for news coverage. But even if this big data on news generation was available, we would still need critical and creative thinking to launch enterprise PR campaigns.
A different article in January’s Atlantic Monthly supported this thought. The Atlantic Monthly article states it best:
“Even if ChatGPT can spit out a pretty good paragraph on AI, it can’t interview AI and labor experts, nor can it find historical documents, nor can it assess the quality of studies of technological change and employment.
It creates content out of what is already out there, with no authority, no understanding, no ability to correct itself, no way to identify genuinely new or interesting ideas. That implies that AI might make original journalism more valuable and investigative journalists more productive, while creating an enormous profusion of simpler content.“
The key to that point? AI can’t interview people like a journalist and publicist can. AI can help publicists with their research but when it comes to creating campaigns from scratch, AI doesn’t create content from scratch. It only creates content from existing content.
Why Quality Big Data is Needed for Machine Learning
In journalism, stories get old quickly. With artificial intelligence, big data can be outdated within hours. Billions of new data points are needed for AI to learn. News changes quickly that any big data could be outdated within a day. (I wrote on that topic here).
Potential clients frequently ask me what is our secret sauce after reviewing our case studies in different industries. I always say, our strategy comes straight from the newsroom. During my time as Executive Producer with NBC, I approved story ideas that came out of the Special Projects unit.
We didn’t have any data at that time to back our story selection – and we still don’t today. Instead, nuance and angles led the coverage.
If you’d like to hear a strategy for your company, feel free to message us and we will schedule a call. You can also get a free PR estimate by clicking here.
ABOUT Mark Macias
Mark Macias founded MACIAS PR in 2009. Marketing peers named MACIAS PR the Best Strategic PR Firm while Finance Monthly named us the Top PR consulting firm. City & State Magazine also named Mark Macias a Top 50 Political PR Player in New York.