Why we favour IQ over AI

INSIGHT

Why we favour IQ over AI

Why Morris Tate does not use AI to create written client content

As an agency, we have tracked the use of AI across a range of markets and applications, including PR and communications. Indeed, we write about its impact on a variety of client sectors on a regular basis.

At Morris Tate we use AI to gain operational benefits, such as better analysing media coverage and gaining greater insight into the results of our activity. We sometimes use AI to inform research, but even then this work is checked by a real person.

However, we will not use Generative AI to create client content such as feature articles, case studies, blogs and press releases for the following reasons.

The technology will inevitably evolve and improve, but nothing beats human experience and judgement when it comes to the written word. We’ll continue to assess how AI can be applied to help us deliver a better service for clients – but for the moment, consider this a manifesto as much as a memo.

Essentially, when a client works with us, it is paying for Morris Tate’s experience. Organisations benefit from our writers’ ability to reflect nuanced opinion and create persuasive copy, a process shaped by our managers’ knowledge of a brand and understanding of the brief. Text generated by Gen AI cannot truly reflect a client’s insight, so will not establish thought leadership. Instead, Gen AI only serves up “junk food for thought”, in the memorable words of Andrew Hill of the Financial Times.

Usefully, our experience covers different sectors and we understand the challenges they face. Unlike AI LLMs, whose “superpower is the ability to bullshit”, we are genuinely knowledgeable on the subjects we address. And by staying on top of issues that resonate with audiences, we can back any positions clients take with reasoned argument – not whatever an LLM scraped from the internet years ago. This makes for timely and relevant PR stories, and is invaluable if a brand is trying to spark a topical conversation, turn a debate, or manage an issue.

Largely, Gen AI copy is derivative, repetitive and bland; it’s just not very good. It’s also very easy to spot! Dismissing its supposed ‘intelligence’ as mere pattern recognition, academics have convincingly argued that a Gen AI LLM is merely a “stochastic parrot”, serving up repeated phrases using probability, not real smarts. Want your brand to stand out? Then use words that set you apart from the competition. Simply parroting AI echo chamber demands to ‘give us a kiss’ won’t cut it.

Inevitably, if your agency relies on AI to generate copy, the quality of its work will degrade over time. The “cognitive offloading” of thinking to AI results in atrophy. An MIT Sloan study of June 2025 found that 83% of ChatGPT users couldn’t quote their own essays mere minutes after they were created – compared to near-perfect recall if written without using AI. Crucially, the researchers also found that creativity also declined with ChatGPT use; AI-assisted essays were more uniform and less original. That’s the AI ‘slop’ your customers are increasingly drowning in. Don’t you owe it to them to do better?

Worryingly, Gen AI copy still carries errors, inaccuracies and unacceptable opinions. What’s more, AI has no long-term memory, so it won’t recall that marketing campaign which bombed last year. Which means it may create something very similar if you ask it again. And do you really want to trust your content creation to any AI model fashioned by its founder’s politics, whatever those politics may be? Do you have faith in an LLM that self-identifies as a “MechaHitler”? We don’t.

Legally, there are ramifications around the use of Gen AI in terms of potential copyright infringement and these might impact on clients, on Morris Tate, and any publishers that use stories we provide on clients’ behalf. And despite legislation such as the EU’s AI Act and ongoing high profile litigation between publishers and tech firms, the picture isn’t getting much clearer.

Fundamentally, AI presents a challenge for every industry, and that includes PR and marketing. How will agencies attract and nurture young talent if they are removed from key parts of the job, and replaced with AI? How will young PRs learn to create great copy if this task is left to Gen AI? PR is a people business: it’s hard to see how clients will get real value from any agency that relies on AI over well-trained and experienced people.

Ultimately, at Morris Tate our work is about protecting and enhancing client reputations. Using Gen AI to draft copy puts that mission at risk. So, until AI can replace a seasoned writer who knows their subject; the propensity for AI to ‘hallucinate’ is addressed; and confusion around AI’s legality is resolved, we don’t think using Gen AI to create PR and marketing copy is a risk we, or our clients, should take.

At Morris Tate we believe every client has a good story in them, and we – not AI – are best placed to help them tell it. It’s that simple.

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Interested in the debate around AI and its impact on the creative industries? Here is a reading list that has shaped our thinking around the subject.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, Harper, 2025.

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, by Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West, Random House Penguin, 2021.

The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood, by James Boyle, The MIT Press, 2024.

Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination, by Karen Hao, Random House Penguin, 2025

How AI is reshaping copyright law and what it means for the news industry, Gretel Khan in conversation with Alina Trapova and Christian Mammen,The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 30 January 2025, last accessed at: https://tinyurl.com/3nr996nx

Will AI make you stupid?, The Economist, 16 July 2025, last accessed at: https://tinyurl.com/53kvvvzp

A white-collar world without juniors?, by Sarah O’Connor, Financial Times, 25 March 2025, last accessed at: https://on.ft.com/3H3RoqJ