Well the comms and marketing people for ChatGPT deserve a prize – it’s literally been everywhere this past two weeks. But should we adopt it now or play a waiting game? This great new post is an essential read.
by Josephine Graham
Unless you’ve been hiding under the duvet for the last few weeks (which let’s be honest, with the rubbish weather recently, and hideous viruses going round, isn’t that unlikely) you’ve probably noticed there is an awful lot of chat in the comms industry about ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has been developed by OpenAI, an ‘AI research and deployment company’. It’s an AI (artificial intelligence) writing and chat tool that ‘interacts in a conversational way’. You might have already tried it out. You can ask it to write comms and it does it for you. OMG.
It only launched in November 2022 and it’s already gone viral, peaking over the last week with new blogs and social media posts emerging from peers on a daily basis. One journalist even used it to write responses to potential matches on her online dating app. (The responses bombed spectacularly.) Since I started writing this blog post I’ve received a cautionary email about how cyber criminals can use ChatGPT to create malicious content. It’s blooming everywhere.
Now, AI should not be a new concept for PR professionals. It’s been on the horizon for a few years. Savvy comms pros know about the ethical questions it raises, such as entrenched bias in the data used to programme it, AI-powered addiction, and unreliability. As long ago as 2016, Julia Bossmann wrote for the World Economic Forum, “Though artificial intelligence is capable of a speed and capacity of processing that’s far beyond that of humans, it cannot always be trusted to be fair and neutral.”
We should also be aware that some of our colleagues in agencies and other budget-rich PR environments have been using AI tools to create content for some time. When it goes well, it flies under the radar, but hits the headlines when things go wrong. You may remember KFC Germany’s recent faux pas when their message creation bot used the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a horrific atrocity of Nazi Germany, as an opportunity to promote cheesy chicken.
As a comms officer in cash-strapped local government, I’ve been aware of AI’s potential use in profession, but I did not trouble myself to find out too much about it, believing ‘that sort out thing’ would be well out of reach in our zero-budget world.
Until now. With AI chat tools currently available for free, we need to get up to speed. So, this morning I put one to the test.
I used Chatsonic, which humbly describes itself as “Like ChatGPT but with superpowers”.
It was pretty good at what I asked it to do. I typed in a polite request for an article encouraging office workers to use the office printers less. It came up with a sufficiently compelling hook and a positively phrased argument as to why it matters. It was better than the mess of words I had been provided by the project team and it saved me the bother of using my brain to write something punchier. It wouldn’t win any prizes for audience insight, but with some of the JFDI comms we are required to do, does that really matter?
Industry thought leaders have also been having a play. Dominic Ridley-Moy on LinkedIn used Chatsonic to write a blog post about COM-B behaviour change. The result was plausible, but bland and repetitive. Steven Waddington found ChatGTP could write a perfectly satisfactory definition of PR, but it struggled with a biography request - it didn’t have the facts in its database so it just made stuff up.
Is ChatGPT the best thing since sliced bread?
There is no doubt that AI is a game changer for lots of industries, not just PR and comms. But it has clear limitations. Having read a few articles about AI chat tools and had a go myself, my conclusion is that the technology lacks any genuine insight - it just regurgitates information that already exists on the web and/or in its database.
Julia Bossmann explained that it’s more technically feasible to automate predictable activities than unpredictable ones. So if you need to write a box-ticking social media post using established information, then fill your boots with the AI chatbot, but if you want to be creative, tell human stories, write a compelling piece that will inspire an emotional response, use audience insight or have a more strategic approach, then you really still do have a job to do.
ChatGPT is currently a fad, and it’s not going to immediately change how a whole industry works. It’s not good enough to replace a comms officer yet, but it is only going to get more sophisticated as machine learning advances. As AI evolves so do the ethical issues it raises. We need to be fully cognisant of future developments and get our heads round the likely consequences.
One worry I have about AI chat/writing tools longer term, is that they will reduce the need for junior staff as we’ll be able to use AI for the basics, especially in resource-constrained public sector teams. Yes it’s great to free up some time if you have no one to delegate to, but we already have an issue with nurturing a younger, more diverse workforce, and this could compound that. We could end up not developing people properly and creating a writing skills shortage later on. We need to be one step ahead, thinking about what skills will be needed in a future AI-assisted teams and make sure we are developing those skills in our teams now, including in entry-level roles.
Having said that, free/cheap AI could be the biggest change for the industry since we stopped using paper and glue to create publishing layouts in the 1980s. The genie is not going back in the bottle. It will soon become part of our arsenal in the same way we use Canva for quick and dirty graphics (but still commission a professional designer for a proper job).
If you currently spend a lot of your time writing perfunctory messages for services, and ‘sending out stuff’ (no shade on this – it’s an average day for me) then it’s time to up your game. Comms teams operating tactically need to reflect on the value they add and become a lot more strategic. Rather than wasting our time writing key messages about why printing less will save the council a few pennies, we will need to be researching and telling the human stories that inspire pride or trust, persuade people to take action, or support our organisational positioning ambitions. We will need to put more focussed effort into researching the more difficult challenges our organisations face, to understand our audience’s motivations and influence their behaviours and decision making. We will need to use our planning tools to their best effect, setting outcome-based objectives, and using evaluation to demonstrate the difference we have made.
So with all that in mind, here are 6 tips to get on with AI in 2023 and turn the threat (if you see it that way) into an opportunity you can grasp with both hands.
1. Have a bit of fun with ChatGPT, Chatsonic and other tools like them. Find out how to produce serviceable content and save yourself time, but also understand the limitations.
2. Be proud of the value you already add as a comms professional in the public sector. Rest assured that a machine cannot do your job, in the same way that a sewing machine cannot design the next spring/summer fashion collection for Stella McCartney.
3. Reflect on your competencies and those of your team. Is it time to get some training on the more strategic skills that will take your capabilities to the next level? We are all on a learning journey so there’s nothing wrong with recognising there is ongoing work to do.
4. Understand the ethical challenges of AI, both new and established issues, including the impact on people as we start to use AI more.
5. Plan ahead and think about the longer-term implications for yourself, your team and the industry. If you’re a manager or head of service think about entry level posts and make sure you continue to create opportunities for people to learn relevant skills for comms teams of the future.
6. Be adaptable and keep reading, observing, and learning. The only constant in life is change so we may as well get on board!
Kudos to the PR folk who have provided inspiration by their sharing their insights on AI chat tools, especially: Lucy Salvage, Dominic Ridley-Moy, Caroline Taylor and Steven Waddington.
Sources and wider reading
ChatGPT and how AI is changing cyber security | TSC (thesecuritycompany.com)
ChatGPT Wrote My Dating App Responses. No One Replied Back. (businessinsider.com)
If video killed the radio star, will ChatGPT kill the comms officer? (linkedin.com)
KFC apologises after German Kristallnacht promotion - BBC News
Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
Josephine Graham is internal communications lead at Bradford Council. You can say hello on Twitter at @iojosy
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