Sarah Evans, Partner and Head of PR at Zen Media, Gab Ferree, Founder at Off the Record and Your Comms BFF and Kaylee Hultgren, Content Director at PRNEWS, uncover the top AI crises brands face today. They delve into synthetic creative backlash, automation failures and data risks. Learn how to navigate these challenges by focusing on transparency and aligning AI use with brand values. Find out how companies like J.Crew are handling AI.
These tips are part of "AI-Driven Crises: Preparing for the New Risk Landscape."
This session was part of the PRNEWS PRO's Online Training Workshop: "Brand Reputation and Crisis Comms in the AI Era."
Watch the full session at this link.
Full transcript:
[KAYLEE HULTGREN]
I think we're gonna take for this uh conversation we're gonna take the perspective of Gab, you're you um can talk about the in-house perspective of crisis communications, and Sara will touch um a bit on how she works with AI monitoring...monitoring from that perspective. So from both of you, what kinds of crises are you seeing the most right now? We can let's start with Sara.
[SARAH EVANS]
AI crises excuse...Good I'm glad you specified. No, what we're seeing right now is really brands who are experimenting faster than they're governing, and that really is is around three, I'd say, dominant crisis patterns. Um first there's backlash around synthetic creative, which I know we talked about when we all had a chance to cha- privately as a group, uh like guests using an AI model without enough context or disclosure. And we're living in a time where even though we may say "Well everyone's using AI," people and consumers can feel deceived uh that human talent is either not um used acknowledged or being displaced.
Uh and then automation gone sideways. When we're really excited you're like "I can build an AI agent," and you're gonna build 20, but you never really thought about what that would look like. As a big brand example, you could take the McDonald's drive-through voice AI um fell apart in a very public way, which we can always dig in on.
And then the world where we live the most I'd say is data and and model risk breaches in AI...um uh native tools, recruiting tools bias. You could think recruiting tools or hiring systems and on that layer deepfakes and misinformation I think those are the constant um background noise. I think that if we take one thing away today it's not that these are tech-only problems. They're going to be reputation and universal problems.
[KAYLEE HULTGREN]
Mm-hmm Mm-hmm And Gab?
[GAB FERREE]
Yeah, I think Sara really hit it. It's a lot about disclosure and whether or not you're sharing how you're using AI with the projects that you're putting out into the world, or out to your company. And I think as Sara said, you know, there's a blanket everyone is using AI, So like don't pretend that you're not using it. Perhaps be very clear about how you are using AI, and maybe use it as an opportunity to dig into your brand values. If you saved time or money by using AI for these systems where was that invested instead? Uh did your people get to train better in professional development? Did you give a donation instead?" So I think that there's actually a lot of opportunity to pivot this from like a "I used a cheat code," to "I'm actually investing in better uses of my time," um while also of course staying true to the brand values.
So Kaylee you and I talked a few weeks ago about J.Crew for an example. Uh they used an AI-generated ad um, it's very misaligned with J.Crew's brand values as like the all-American natural and authentic company, and with now hiring real talent, photographers, lighting designers, costume designers, models, et cetera, they were antithetical to their brand. That would be different for an AI company.
So we as the comms people need to ask ourselves "Is this use of AI aligned with our brand Yes or no?" And then "How can we actually promote our brand values by talking about how we're using AI?
Produced by: PRNEWS