INSIGHT
AI, AI...OH
How we do (and do not) use AI, and why
Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, and is being used widely across all sectors, disciplines and industries. In public relations and communications, it can be used for any number of activities; some are beneficial for operational efficiencies, while others, however, are detrimental to the end goal of managing and protecting client reputations.
For that reason, and while the world grapples with how to adequately regulate the use of the technology, we believe it is our responsibility to:
be clear and transparent with clients on how we do (and do not) use AI, and why;
ensure that our team is educated in the most effective and up to date learnings on AI, and specifically how it is applied to our industry – so we can better counsel our clients, and deliver a better service.
Ultimately, we approach the use of AI as we would any new tool – by stress-testing it, scrutinising the results, interrogating the tech, and asking that all-important question: “Is this actually going to help us, and our clients?”
If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, then it’s off the table.
The world of AI moves at an incredible pace – and what is deemed good/bad today, may be the reverse by the next AGM. Because of that, we’ll review how we use AI on a quarterly basis, and make changes when necessary.
How Morris Tate uses AI:
Market research: analysing client competitors and analysis of client sectors to better inform KPIs, campaign goals and focus messaging.
Background research: tracking issues in the media and how they are covered in a broad range of titles. It provides a deep insight into key themes in the media, and how they’re being written about and received.
Data analysis: media coverage, brand awareness and share of voice to enhance measurement and reporting. We use the industry tool, Releasd, for this purpose.
Headline story reports: tracking news items about specific topics, and the journalists writing them – so we can make more of the right introductions to the right journalists, for the right client.
And where we don’t:
Decision making: not a single decision is passed to AI. The moment we begin to waver on trusting our own intuition, experience and understanding to make crucial decisions on behalf of our business or our clients , and instead give it to a machine to do, please pull the ripcord.
Account management and direction: Our team is exclusively made up of senior PR practitioners and seasoned specialist journalists. We take time to understand our clients’ challenges, successes and everything in between and we are solely responsible for the management, direction and coordination of our client accounts.
Client content: The big one. We write for humans, so our work is written by humans. It is generated by IQ (many years of experience, studying, career development and, frankly, an inherent knack for communicating), not AI. And we’re not alone; journalists and their readers (the very people our clients need to engage with), are increasingly vocal about shunning ‘AI slop’.
Morris Tate content: As above!
Governance
When using AI, as detailed above, our chosen licensed AI tool is Claude. All chats, artefacts and AI outputs (files) are all stored within secure and closed client projects. This means the information is not used to train AI models and remains private. Access to these projects is limited to the Morris Tate senior PR team, and access is monitored and tracked.
Without fail, any and all AI output for reporting, research and analysis is cross-checked and reviewed by a member of the Morris Tate team, often requiring secondary reviews and editing to ensure the information is water-tight.
Our use of AI is human-directed, managed and scrutinised, and we treat the technology as an enhanced Google – offering us more advanced and bespoke research and analysis tools that make administrative time more efficient, freeing us up to focus on the big stuff: maintaining and protecting reputations, creating compelling human-crafted content, and brand to brand human connection.
We’ll continue to bang the drum for the transparent and responsible use of AI in PR and communications. And for the journalists, copywriters and creatives whose talent and expertise is the lifeblood of our industry.
* No AI was harmed used in the making of this article*
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