Robotic PR: Five Ways AI Is Transforming Public Relations
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the buzzword of the decade. With so much hype surrounding it, it can feel like everything — everywhere — will be AI-driven by next year.
But beyond the hype, few industries are as ripe for transformation by AI as public relations.
AI isn’t just a trend — it’s a toolkit. And for PR professionals, it’s about changing the way we work, tell stories, and connect with audiences.
Why Will AI Change Public Relations?
There are several reasons why public relations, communications, and wider marketing are so vulnerable to the changes that AI will bring. Notably:
Public relations has content at its core. Large Language Models (LLMs) are uniquely suited to generating readable text at speed — a task humans will find increasingly hard to outperform as the technology improves.
Journalists and media organisations are time-poor, and AI offers the opportunity to bridge the gap in the quantity of journalism created.
AI makes DIY PR much easier for small and medium-sized businesses and organisations, putting pressure on smaller regional PR agencies.
AI also has the potential to flood content channels with a deluge of new material, making it harder for quality content to stand out.
Here’s how AI might reshape public relations:
1. Robotic Journalists: PR at Machine Speed
AI agents can already produce readable, publishable content, and they are only getting better and more believable over time.
Shortly, AI-powered PR agents will be able to:
- Generate high-quality press releases instantly
- Adapt them for dozens (or hundreds) of media outlets
- Distribute them at speed with pinpoint accuracy
While writing and editing will still matter, the real value will shift toward strategic storytelling — crafting narratives that resonate across platforms and contexts.
With the ability to create press releases and other media kits quickly and to a high standard, the burden of work will fall on quality control, fact-checking, and distribution.
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2. PR at the Speed of Data
As businesses produce increasing volumes of internal and external data, AI can convert that data into press-ready content.
Imagine:
Your Sheffield branch has a record sales weekend. By Monday morning, an AI agent had written a press release, selected local media outlets, and drafted social posts. Photos, quotes, and staff highlights? AI pulls it all together in seconds.
Speed is no longer just about being first — it’s about being relevant in the moment.
This type of data-driven PR will require both effective data management and controls to ensure that PR at the speed of data does not lead to data breaches, false reporting, and press campaigns that do not gel with the organisation’s strategic goals.
3. Content Recycling and Repurposing
AI does not just create content — it can repurpose and repackage existing content across multiple formats and platforms.
Many newspapers have vast and extensive archives of photos and text that, in the case of papers like The Times, go back a couple of hundred years. This presents a wide range of opportunities for both publishers to create content and for PR teams to create new opportunities.
Think about a fast fashion retail business. With effective database management, AI agents could review previous coverage — say, a feature on a dress covered in an article just a month earlier — and search social media for people wearing that dress.
It could then highlight the accounts and prepackage the content ready for dispatch to the same news outlet as a follow-up, even building the affiliate links into the pre-packed content that includes both raw text and images, as well as a ready-to-publish HTML version.
This repackaging and recreation of content will blur the lines of PR, press, journalism, marketing, and social media to a greater extent than today.
4. Selling In: Editorial Influence Will Matter More
PR professionals often spend more time creating content than building influence.
AI flips that script. With PR at the speed of data, talking to journalists and building relationships with editors and sponsors will become an increasingly important part of the role.
Knowing who to talk to will become easier; however, knowing how to talk with them will become even more important. Public relations will shift to focus more on the press and less on outsourced content creation — moving towards relationship builders who can collaborate on projects that serve both parties’ interests.
In short, AI frees you to focus on what humans do best — building trust and making connections with news teams and editorial decision-makers.
5. AI as Editor, Filter, and Creator: The Human Touch Returns to Combat the ‘Dead Internet’
As AI floods inboxes with pitches and stories, editors and journalists will need AI-powered filters just to stay sane. This will create a new ecosystem where only the most relevant, personalised, and well-pitched stories come through. PR professionals will spend more time:
- Talking to journalists directly
- Curating and tailoring their stories
- Understanding what actually matters to their audience
Ironically, the rise of AI will make human connection even more essential.
AI thrives on patterns. It can tailor content for SEO, optimise for engagement, and mimic what performs well, sometimes too well.
This could lead to a flood of formulaic content — a trend some describe as the “Dead Internet Theory,” where AI-generated noise drowns out genuine human interaction, including strange viral oddities like the infamous “shrimp Jesus” meme.
This article explains the concept well. PR professionals who can cut through that noise with genuine human stories will become more valuable than ever.
This ability to rise above the noise will define wider communications and marketing in the next couple of decades.
A Day in the Life: The Future PR Pro
Let’s fast-forward.
You work in the communications department of a major high-street retailer. It’s Monday morning.
Over the weekend, your AI agent has identified several potential stories based on internal sales data.
You review and approve them, and they’re instantly dispatched to local and national media.
One standout: a long-serving staff member is retiring after 30 years. You call the local paper. An AI-powered answering service routes your call to a journalist.
The story is picked up and a photographer is sent. By midday, you're tweaking the AI’s messaging prompts to align with your spring campaign. The social team is already turning unused stories into videos.
Before you head home, you spot that two of your AI-drafted press releases have been published in national media.
The workday has changed — and yet, it hasn’t. Much of the work is the same. Some parts have been turbocharged, and in others, it slows down.
AI will reshape PR, but it won’t eliminate it.
Final Thoughts
AI Won’t Replace PR, But It Will Redefine It
AI isn’t here to make PR professionals obsolete — it’s here to make them better.
Public relations, social media, and marketing will need to operate more cohesively, as part of the same ecosystem of influence and communication.
Great writing will still matter — but great storytelling, strong relationships, and sound editorial judgment will matter even more.
If you are thinking about AI, and want to have a great primer, this book by Richard Susskind is a great place to start.
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