While attention on and interest in artificial intelligence as a tool to aid and amplify people’s creativity continues in a non-stop fashion with ideas, opinions, announcements and more appearing in unequal measure on a daily basis, AI is not catching on everywhere.
During much of 2022, all the attention was on creating AI-generated images with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALLE-2 as the primary trio of tools that anyone could use to translate imaginations into reality, even winning an art contest.
So far in this year 2023, all the talk has been about chatbots and specifically ChatGPT that have profoundly captured imaginations in the mainstream with the simple formula of writing a question or instruction for the AI to create a text result from the prompt.
Excitement and hype has been endless. Good and bad news surface everywhere. If I were to look at this on a hype cycle graph, I’d place this AI right at the top of the peak of inflated expectations, perhaps even slightly onto the edge of the slippery slope that leads down to the trough of disillusionment.
There’s no doubt that developments in AI are moving at quite a pace. While hype is at its peak, the time is now for learning more about AI, experimenting with it yourself, and discovering how it can be of distinct value to you in your work (and in your leisure). With learning and experimenting come the confidence to discard the hype as you glean insights that help you focus on what matters and what actually is important.
Except in a large part of the PR profession, it seems. Ironic, given PR’s key role in creating excitement (and hype).
According to the results of a PRCA and ICCO survey conducted in February and published this week, 25 percent of those surveyed stated categorically that they would never use AI tools such as ChatGPT in their work in public relations.
This is the collective view of some of the CEOs, directors, and department heads who are members of the two professional bodies behind the survey, or work for agencies that are. The PRCA alone represents 35,000 PR professionals in 82 countries worldwide.
I’ve not seen more information than that published by the PRCA in its press release. It would be good to know more about the reasons behind why 25 percent of survey respondents say they’d never use AI, assuming they were asked for reasons. Such naysayers will likely be quite surprised when they learn how much they already use AI without being aware of it.
There is some good news, though. As the numbers in the image above show, 30 percent of survey respondents said they’ve never used ChatGPT or other AI tools before but plan to do so soon. 15 percent said they are fairly frequent or very frequent users already. 29 percent said they rarely use such tools.
Could it be ignorance about AI and the pros and cons that prompted 25 percent to respond the way they did? Perhaps respondents have had bad experiences that inform their present views? That’s a possibilty but I doubt it would be so for all 25 percent. Are they put off by all the hype, never mind the excitement? Possibly. But I believe it’s most likely lack of knowledge.
So there are some hills to climb here in the PR profession where over half the survey respondents (54 percent) have rarely or never used AI and don’t intend to. I wonder how they respond to clients who ask them for advice and counsel on this topic with questions such as:
Etc.
Don’t sleepwalk on AIThere is plenty of information out there if you look that will help you see some worthwhile benefits from using a tool like ChatGPT in your work that will benefit you and your clients or your employer. Here’s a simple list of just five reasons why you should seriously consider using AI in your PR work:
This list was created by ChatGPT from a prompt I gave it. I edited it very lightly, mostly replacing ‘customer’ with ‘client’ that better reflects naming conventions in the industry. It can give you some ideas worth looking into where you can add some flesh to these skeletons, as it were.
Also, check out a newly-published report from the CIPR titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and the impact on public relations practice” that the CIPR describes as “the most comprehensive review to date of AI use within the profession.”
Signficantly, the CIPR notes:
The public relations industry is “sleepwalking into a technological future” unless it gets a better understanding of the potential applications and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) and wider technology.
CIPR
In addition, as awareness of AI tools and what you can use them for increases – alongside the hype and some unrealistic expectations – some people are sharing the learnings from and outcomes of their experiments, helping others make their own starts, such as:
Don’t ignore these still-emerging technologies that will have a profound impact on our lives let alone our work.
Finally, the image at the top of this page that I’ve titled ‘Ostrich Surprised’ was created by a new AI image generator called Blue Willow AI from a simple prompt I gave it. It’s free to use and very good. Give it a try!
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