How PR pros should prepare for artificial intelligence

Any agreement among agency executives about the future of artificial intelligence in PR seems limited to, well, its limits.

In a recent column on PR Week, Ivan Ristic of Diffusion suggested that while AI might be good for data mining keywords across blogs and online publications to find trends for clients, it still won’t replace relationships that define the industry.

“A bot can’t lay claim to emotional intelligence, a cornerstone of all PR work. Teams employing AI handling external communication would be wise to have plans to manage reputation should anything go awry,” he wrote. “Humans build trust with humans—not bots.”

When used effectively, machines can get smarter about how to book hotels, solve customer service issues and much more. Is it really so difficult to imagine a bot that would generate pitch ideas for specific journalists? While some in the profession loathe to hear it, it’s not far-fetched.