Three ways AI can improve PR activity (that aren’t content creation)

I must have seen hundreds of articles telling me how AI in PR will create press releases, content and even strategy from scratch for me but in the real world, anyone who has seen a post ‘written’ by AI knows that it’ll be a long time before it can replicate the quality of human work (even if the flood of AI dross onto LinkedIn and Medium suggests others think differently). 

However, there are other ways that AI tools can support PR practitioners that I see discussed less often, so I wanted to share three practical examples of how I’ve been using AI to free up time for strategy and creativity.  

AI as a personal assistant 

The problem: As a head of comms, much of my working time is taking up with the admin of running a team, from running meetings to responding to emails. It’s not exactly the immersion in strategy that you think you’re signing up for, and it’s also a really bad use of an organisation’s money. No-one is paying a senior comms pro for their ability to get the actions out quickly after a meeting.  

The AI solution: I managed to badger our tech and IT team to let me be one of the first to try Microsoft’s Copilot tool, which plugs into Office 365 and which we have set up to be able to access our files, meeting and emails without sharing the content outside the organisation. 

This helps me prep for one-to-ones with my team and catch up on emails after time off, but the function I use day in, day out is the meeting assistant which takes the transcript of your Teams call and turns it into notes. 

You need to have transcription running, so this isn’t suitable for some more sensitive meetings, but in general it allows me to be fully present and focused on what is being said, given that I don’t have the luxury of an assistant to take notes for me.  

The prompts you need to know: Copilot suggests several useful meeting prompts such as ‘recap meeting so far’, ‘what questions are unresolved’ and ‘list action items’.  

However, I find it more useful when answering specific prompts, such as ‘what did X say about the new marketing campaign?’ It also helps to add additional instructions such as ‘provide a good level of detail, and organise into bullet points.’  

Because Copilot can access our emails and files in SharePoint I can also ask questions like ‘How does what X said relate to [document name]’ to quickly see links between different aspects of our work. When information overload is very real, this is a useful function - a bit like having external memory for your own brain.  

The red flags to be aware of: Copilot’s setting prevents our info being shared outside the organisation but this isn’t true for all AI tools - be careful you’re not sharing anything commercially or personally sensitive with the outside world. As with any AI tool, it still needs to be fact-checked before information is shared. It also doesn’t function brilliantly in really long meetings (who does!) tending to stop listening partway through.  

AI as a research assistant 

The problem: PR is a fast-changing industry, and it’s crucial to stay ahead of trends in innovation, ethics and technology to maintain a competitive edge for the organisation and your own reputation as a subject expert. But in reality, you could spend your whole working week reading articles, listening to podcasts and flicking through research journals.  

The AI solution: This is where I’ve been using the relative new kid, Google’s NotebookLM. You might have seen this in the news recently due to its ability to generate uncannily human-sounding podcasts, however NotebookLM’s real power is as a research tool. You add your sources into your notebook and then NotebookLM will answer questions, create FAQs, briefing documents or study guides. 

It’s particularly useful for dense information such as academic papers, and the claim is that because it focuses on the provided sources the risk of hallucination or pulling in irrelevant information is lowered.   

The prompts you need to know: Like Copilot, NotebookLM suggests prompts – although they’re more in-depth. For example, in a notebook I had compiled to look at PR trends, NotebookLM suggested ‘How has the media landscape evolved in the last 15 years and what are the implications for PR professionals’ and ‘How can PR professionals leverage data and social media effectively to reach journalists’.  

But where NotebookLM really comes into its own is in helping to turn theory into practice. So for example, asking “Suggest three ideas from this research that can be implemented in the short term by my communications team at Teenage Cancer Trust to increase cut-through” suggested practical steps from the research papers that I could share with my team.  

The red flags to be aware of: Because NotebookLM is so good at synthesising very complex information such as research papers, it makes fact-checking harder. That’s probably not a disaster if you use it as I do, to spot trends and stay ahead of new ideas, but if you’re using it to make business decisions you’ll need to be ultra-careful.  

AI as a critical friend 

The problem: Framing and confirmation bias can often make it difficult to spot issues in our own work - particularly when it comes to strategy. And because strategies are often developed by just one person, this blindness can result in teams going down the wrong path or missing vital angles.  

The AI solution: This is where AI tools that are built directly into your workflow, like Copilot, can really be your friend. By building a library of prompts that ask AI to critique your work you can have a second brain working alongside your own to spot any gaps - and you don’t have to worry about that colleague whose feedback style is less-than-friendly.  

The prompts you need to know: Simply asking your AI to critique your document’s suitability as a brief, strategy or plan is a good place to start. With Copilot this results in a list of strengths followed by potential areas of improvement.  

You could then dig deeper, for example asking AI to highlight weaknesses your competitors might take advantage of or what emerging trends you should consider including. As always, it’s important to be specific - the prompt “What emerging PR trends should I consider incorporating? 

Provide actionable insights that are directly relevant to and could be incorporated into this document. Be really innovative - I want to be surprised” will create better answers than simply asking “What PR trends could I incorporate?” (In fact the “be really innovative” line is one I like to include in many prompts).  

Another good way to know whether your document is likely to be effective is to ask “What outputs and outcomes could I expect from this brief/strategy/plan?” If the answer is wildly off what you would expect - particularly if the outcomes aren’t related to your organisational outcomes - then that’s a sign to interrogate your work further.  

The red flags to be aware of: 

Of course, this is where AI can never really replace human knowledge of your own organisation, so don’t blindly follow all the recommendations made. And without another real human in the mix it might be easier to overlook any challenges or recommendations, so you will need to be strict with yourself and stay open minded about the possibility for improvement.  

 Kat Dibbits  is head of communications at the  Teenage Cancer Trust  and a Chartered PR  practitioner.

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