PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations

Welcome

In this edition, we cover Stuart Bruce and Anne Gregory's webinar for the CIPR on the ethics of AI in PR, with links to the video and an AI-generated summary and transcript.

Stuart has created a custom AI chatbot to answer your questions on ethics and AI in PR. It's free so please try it and if you do, we'd really appreciate some feedback so let us know what you think.

We also explore the challenges of communication measurement in 2024, insights from Gartner's research on CEOs' views on AI, and the latest updates from the Global Dublin Conversations project. We look at the new UK government's approach to AI and digital innovation, the impact of podcasts on the recent UK election, and the highlights from Tony Blair's Future of Britain Conference on AI. Finally, we examine TikTok's influence on the UK general election.

Enjoy the read!

News

CIPR PR ethics and AI webinar

Purposeful Relations co-founder Stuart Bruce and advisory board member Anne Gregory delivered a webinar for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) on ethics and AI for public relations and communications.

Watch the video, read the AI generated summary and AI transcript.

Karen Marshall

Try our new PR AI ethics AI bot

We're always researching and experimenting with new AI tools. Last week I built a custom AI bot trained on the CIPR's ethics and AI advice and best practice guidance, along with some of Purposeful Relations's proprietary research and training materials.

I did it for the people who attended the CIPR's AI ethics webinar I did with Professor Anne Gregory.

Try it out and let us know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

Do you want to create your own custom AI tools?

At Purposeful Relations we can not only help you to create AI policies and strategies and provide training, we can also create custom AI tools based on your needs and proprietary information.

Have a play with our custom chatbot on ethics for AI and PR.

Contact Stuart or Tim for a quick chat.

Karen Marshall

Data, measurement, analytics

Can a 1985 marketing playbook fix communication measurement problems in 2024?

SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin says attribution models don’t work anymore. I'd go further and say they never worked well as they've always been far too limited in scope to provide enough reliable data. The gist of Fishkin's arguments is they now work even less well than before because of issues like the demise of third-party cookies to track users and the increase in the use of ad blockers.

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

New Science, Innovation and Technology minister outlines AI-enabled government

The new Labour government's King's Speech was expected to include an AI bill, which didn't materialise. However, this doesn't mean AI isn't high on the government's agenda. Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has AI high on his priorities.

The delay perhaps indicates the scale of the task. The government needs to rapidly enable the safe and effective use of AI and digital across all departments. Hopefully, it will ensure that every new policy and bill published will consider how AI could apply. If they don't the risk is that 'new' policies will rapidly become out of date and won't be as effective as they could be.

The broader aspect is ensuring the UK is at the forefront of both developing and using AI across every sector. This means considering all of the ethical implications on issues like copyright, privacy and workers rights in a way that doesn't restrict the use of AI but encourages its use safely, effectively and ethically.

The new Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for AI and Digital Government is London MP Feryal Clark who was only appointed after the election having previously been a shadow health minister.

Stuart Bruce

Was this the first podcast election?

Top political podcasts saw downloads rise by more than half during the 2024 UK election, leading one publisher to dub it "the first podcast election". One of the most notable was Political Currency hosted by former cabinet ministers Ed Balls and George Osborne where episode downloads rose 81% between the week the election was called and the week it ended. The Rest is Politics hosted by former Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy Alastair Campbell and former cabinet minister Rory Stewart is the UK's most downloaded political podcast.

Stuart Bruce

Tony Blair's Future of Britain Conference on AI

The recording of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) Future of Britain Conference is now available. Many of the sessions focused on and included AI.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Gartner research reveals what CEOs really think about AI

Research by Gartner has revealed CEOs are bullish and optimistic about AI's potential. When asked which new technology will most impact their businesses over the next three years 59% of CEOs said AI. For context digitalisation was second by some margin - 5%.

Three-quarters of CEOs personally used ChatGPT in the first half of 2023, and 44% used it in their jobs.

Significantly the largest group (36%) expect generative AI to increase company productivity by more than 15% while 46% expect increases of 6-15%.

However, there is little clarity on how this will happen. AI's potential is so broad that for companies to gain productivity wins they need to quickly identify activities where AI can be used most effectively and provide training to enable their teams to benefit from using it.

Let us know if we can help you to identify your activities that would benefit most from AI.

Stuart Bruce

Global Dublin Conversations project publishes new insights and toolkits

A catalogue of new insights and inspirations for the future of communications, ’57 conversation starters from the Dublin Conversations’, has been produced by the global project ahead of its forthcoming #ConversationsFest weekend conference in Sligo, Ireland in September.

Drawing upon new thinking in behavioural sciences, digital technology, philosophy, sociology and more, the report shares ideas ranging from creating a potential new grand universal theory for comms to new tools for practice.

The Dublin Conversations is a non-commercial global collective of academics and practitioners developing new thinking and doing, freely sharing its toolkit and training programmes to kickstart faster change for a fitter for purpose communications industries.

Stuart Bruce

Which publishers and stories get most social media engagement?

CommTech platform NewsWhip has used its Spike tool to analyse which publishers and stories are getting the most engagement across different platforms, including the likes of Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Microsoft Photos introduces even more AI editing capabilities with Microsoft Designer

Microsoft is continuing to enhance and improve its products using AI. Its latest is Microsoft Photos getting an even closer integration with Microsoft Designer, so you can stay in the flow, using AI to edit photos. At the moment it's still in beta so only available to some people who have opted in to Microsoft's Insider programme.

The enhancements mean AI will intelligently detect the objects in your image, allowing you to personalize it with ease. Erase objects from your shot, create beautiful portrait photos with background blur, add creative flair with color pop, enhance the visual impact of your image with auto crop, or try out the new text and markup features to bring your creative ideas to life.

Stuart Bruce

Case studies

TikTok's impact on the UK general election

Gordon Macmillan, Twitter's former head of content strategy and a former Haymarket journalist, takes a fascinating look at how the Labour Party and the Conservatives use of TikTok turned out.

Stuart Bruce