AI has put many communicators into a constant state of fear. They don’t know if their current job is at risk, or even if their entire career is over. On the flip side, the boss is telling people to do more with less, treating AI as some magical solution to every operational or communications challenge.
And tied to all of it is, “How can I get on top of this overwhelming new technology to save my career?”
Most communicators and agency owners share these concerns, and I spent three years wondering if my company was about to be swallowed up by the AI content machine. But looking back—and forward—I’m just going to say it: communicators should embrace the AI era, because our true skills will be more important than ever.
Most people still can’t write.
Let’s tackle the first concern: Will AI take communicators jobs?
For mediocre writers who want to hide in the corner and churn out just decent content? The answer is yes. AI can do that job faster for about the same quality.
The rest of the industry is already seeing bad writers become worse by relying on AI. This means those who can write—as well as think, uncover stories and devise narratives—will stand out more.
“AI slop is what happens when writers outsource their thinking,” said SB Miller Comms founder and AI Comms Strategist Sara Miller, former Head of AWS Strategy and Operations Communications. “The ones who treat AI as an expert writer instead of a thought partner tool end up producing content that sounds like everything else out there. The smarter approach is to write first, then use AI to pressure test, challenge your assumptions and sharpen your thinking, while bringing human judgment, personal experience, context and unique stories to the page.”
Miller also notes that “a strong writer brings something AI cannot replicate: emotional intelligence, creative ideas, a true voice and a genuine point of view. They break the AI slop cycle.”
In short, there’s a difference in an interview between “I’ll have AI write this press release” and “I’ll develop the strategy, narratives, voices and media targets so that this press release actually matters. Oh, and I’ll use AI to help draft the content.”
AI makes great fake stories. Humans make the real ones.
Next, focus on what AI can’t do. The bot is good at creating sentences and paragraphs, but it’s incapable of getting to the soul of real human stories. Those stories come from beating hearts, not from motherboards, and they’re still the currency that grabs stakeholders.
I used to transcribe interviews as a journalist, so I appreciate the AI systems used to create transcripts and transcript summaries in seconds. It literally saves hours.
But that same AI system is going to miss the natural questions that get to the bottom of the issue. Only humans can sit down with the executive and dig up what makes him different, or what her greatest challenge was coming up through the ranks.
Talking face to face gets the job done, and even better, it feeds and waters a relationship.
The AI system may also prioritize the executive who checks the prompt’s boxes on paper, only for him to bomb an interview or absolutely not resonate with stakeholders. The human communications professional knows how to find real people with real experiences, who can speak in their own authentic voices—transforming “average” everymen into trusted sources with extraordinary stories that resonate in the right market.
“Every journalist knows that the best interviews don’t happen by e-mail, and the same is true if you ask people to ‘interview’ with an AI system,” says Evan Boyer, Founder, Leaders PR. “When our trucking client needed media coverage, we spent hours talking to several different customers in a variety of markets. The personal conversations yielded some incredibly unique stories that supported a narrative people in those markets needed to hear.”
This brings us to a final point about humans: When everyone in a sector has the same AI systems pumping out slop, errors and even deepfakes, authenticity is the difference-maker. Influencers, journalists, and other partners on whom we rely to reach stakeholders—as well as the stakeholders themselves—will insist on proving that what we say, and who is saying it, is real.
Technology changes. Communications does not.
AI is a bright, flaming reminder to PR pros to double down on the fundamentals of good communications. Seeing around corners, getting to the heart of problems, digging up elegant solutions and knowing what your client wants to say before they can articulate it—these skills have moved the world since Grog the caveman chiseled “SEE GURG’S WHEEL” on a stone tablet.
In the thousands of years since, the tools have changed, but fundamental strategies and human strengths haven’t. Not a single new piece of tech has taken their relevance away. AI won’t, either— especially, according to Austley Founder Leah Dergachev, if they view AI as a strategic thinking partner to create content that actually matters.
“When communicators treat AI as a content machine, you can tell.,” says Dergachev, who is an AI coach for marketing and communications teams. “It all sounds the same and says nothing specific. I worked with a CEO whose content kept leading with ‘we’re fixing a broken system,’ but so was everyone in that space. We used AI to pressure-test the messaging, asking ‘so what’ until we landed on what differentiated their message and spoke directly to their customers.”
When it's good, AI can improve our processes, like how a calculator spares us the need to write out long division. But speeding up your math means nothing if you still can’t balance your checkbook. Same thing with comms in the age of AI slop: don’t let the robot swallow you.
Master it.
Dustin Siggins is Founder at Proven Media Solutions