PR Futurist | Stuart Bruce | Purposeful Relations - 🚀 PR Futurist 76 |🤖 2024 the year to explore AI| 🙏 Remembering Derek

Welcome

2024, the year you start to systematically explore AI in your organisation.

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2024. To quote Douglas Adams "Trying to predict the future is a mugs game" however, as we are going to have to live there, we are sharing thoughts on the future of journalism, technology and AI in 2024.

OpenAI never seems to sleep as it announces ChatGPT Teams making companywide adoption more practical and the GPT Store a place to find and share specialist GPTs. However, Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School shares research suggesting that custom LLMs (think something like ChatGPT that you have also fed with specialist data) may not be better than a good generalist LLM.

At Purposeful Relations we can help you with creating a strategy around AI for your organisation, drop us a line to start the conversation.

From our ‘At Last!’ correspondent, Meta is going to integrate Threads with the Fediverse, allowing it to interoperate with other social networks. We are not holding our breath that the wall around the Meta garden will be dismantled anytime soon, but any movement towards interoperation has to be good for the end user.

Our CommTech tool this issue is Microsoft Copilot. If you're using the free version of ChatGPT then you really should use Copilot, as it gives you many of the benefits of the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus for free.

We've also a little favour to ask. Can you please forward this newsletter to one other person you know in public relations or communications and ask them to subscribe. Thanks.

STOP PRESS - Edelman has just published its 2024 Global Trust Barometer. We haven't had time to do our own analysis yet, so we've included the great summary from PRovoke Media.

News

Will 2024 be the year of AI? | Stuart's LinkedIn newsletter

As well as publishing the fortnightly PR Futurist Stuart also publishes a personal LinkedIn newsletter that goes to more than 1,500 people. It's an occasional newsletter to update his contacts on what he's up to and the most significant things happening in the world of public relations and communications. If you don't already receive it then you might want to take a look.

Tim Bailey

Derek Draper — Rest in Peace

The New Year brought tragic news with the death of Derek Draper. Both Stuart and Tim knew Derek and have their own personal memories of him. I know that many subscribers to PR Futurist also knew Derek, from one or more of the many varied aspects of his colourful life, and will join us in mourning his passing.

There have been numerous moving obituaries, but attempting to capture every aspect of Derek is a challenge. Paul Richards does it wonderfully in his moving and powerful tribute.

Stuart particularly liked Paul's reference to the Groucho Club as all of Stuart's visits to the Groucho were at Derek's invitation.

RIP Derek. Our thoughts are with Kate, Darcey, Billy and the rest of Derek's family.

Karen Marshall

Corporate affairs

2024 is the year of elections as the world goes to the ballot box

In 2017 Brenda from Bristol went viral with her response to the news that then UK prime minister Theresa May had called a snap election. She replied: "You’re joking? Not another one!” Brenda probably won't welcome the fact that 2024 is the year of elections with more than two billion people, or more than half the world's population, in 76 countries going to the polls.

Bangladesh and Taiwan have already been to the polls. The US will see President Biden face off a Republican challenger. In the UK the opposition Labour Party needs to fight its way back from a devastating defeat in 2019 to overturn a huge Conservative majority. We will also see elections in Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa, Brazel, the European Union parliament and many more.

NewsWhip has a guest post from Marshall Manson that provides an excellent round-up of what to expect.

It doesn't matter what aspect of communications you do the elections will impact and influence your work. If you need a briefing to help understand the potential implications of a change of government in the UK then get in touch.

Karen Marshall

Get in touch

Innovation and efficiency in 2024

Purposeful Relations offers consulting, training and mentoring for PR and communications teams and leaders - in-house and agency.

We can help with:

Getting up to speed with how to best use AI in Comms and transform both your organisation and client engagements.

Better measurement and evaluation through customised frameworks that work for your company or organisation.

The start of 2024 is an ideal time to review your current Comms Tech expenditure to ensure you are getting value for money. Our CommsTransfrom process is a technology audit that makes recommendations for where you can get better value for money.

Contact us to start the conversation.

The image was created using DALI-E via Microsoft Copilot.

Crisis communication

How not to talk to employees

When I first saw this video I assumed it was a parody or fake news. Surely no CEO could be this crass? It's only January, but this is potentially the most cringe-worthy internal communications video you'll see this year... or ever!

I have so many questions. What possessed them to do it? Who was involved in creating and approving it? How did it possibly get past a corporate communications professional?

The comments on my LinkedIn post show that I'm not the only PR professional that was horrified by it.

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

OpenAI launches ChatGPT for teams

OpenAI has now released ChatGPT Team. It's potentially a game changer for business adoption of AI as it enables a company wide approach to AI with teams collaborating to create unique company ways of using AI.

One of the key benefits of ChatGPT Team is it solves the problem of uploading confidential data to AI and it being incorporated into its data set. Any data uploaded into ChatGPT Team remains confidential.

It's not the only team solution as at Purposeful Relations we've been experimenting with Team-GPT for sometime.

It does highlight how difficult it is for companies to decide on the right approach to AI. Should it be ChatGPT Team? Or Microsft 365 Copilot when it launches on business licences? Or Google's Duet. Or third-party solutions like Team-GPT than can use multiple models including GPT-4 and Anthropic's Claude.

There is no one correct answer, which is why we start with helping clients to identify objectives and a strategy, before jumping straight into tools.

Stuart Bruce

OpenAI launches its GPT store

Coinciding with the launch of ChatGPT Team OpenAI has also opened its GPT Store. This is where you can discover and use custom versions of ChatGPT created by users. You can use it to find useful GPTs to use yourself, or you can create your own custom GPTs and publish them in the store.

Tim Bailey

Are custom AI models really better than generalist ones?

Many companies and organisations are embracing AI by developing their own large language models which are trained on their own proprietary (and sometimes confidential) data. Bloomberg, McKinsey, MumsNet and the UK's Government Communication Service (GCS) are some of those taking this approach.

The Wharton School's Professor Ethan Mollick has shared some fascinating research that shows custom LLMs might not be as good as the results GPT-4 can already generate. The specific example looks at Bloomberg's LLM, but he indicates it could be part of a pattern where "the smartest generalist frontier models beat specialized models in specialized topics."

Stuart Bruce

What's the future for publishing and AI?

Since the launch of ChatGPT there has been much discussion about what it means for the future of publishing and content creators of all types. Some are alarmed at AI learning from copyright content.

There are already legal battles on different aspects of the debate, but one of the most interesting is the New York Times's action against OpenAI.

This is OpenAI's public response where it explains how it supports journalism, partners with news organisations, and believe The New York Times lawsuit is without merit.

It has been much discussed and I shared my personal thoughts in a comment on a LinkedIn post by Christopher Penn.

"I initially kept changing my mind on this. There are two issues - legal and moral. On legal I'm watching developments, as there is no clear answer. On moral I'm now firmly of the belief that it's not just fine but that it's verging on immoral to say it isn't.

Copyright protects words and images. It doesn't protect ideas. The best analogy I heard was from the CEO of The Atlantic. People can go into a library and read every back issue of The Atlantic. They can even copy parts of it. That's actually something most writers and publishers would want to happen.

That's all AI is doing. It's just doing it 'better' and at scale.

Assuming the person uploading it has already paid for it then morally it is no different to them letting a friend read it or giving it to a friend to own.

There is an urgent and important need to find new ways to financially compensate creators, but stopping people or AI reading or using their work isn't it.

Not allowing AI to use copyright content is as immoral as Luddites smashing machines in the early days of the industrial revolution."

As this is such a controversial and much debated issue we'd love to know what you think.

Stuart Bruce

Meta's Threads will integrate with the Fediverse

The full article we've shared is long and a bit geeky, but it's significant so here is the TL;DR.

Meta is integrating its new Threads social network with the Fediverse. The Fediverse is a collection of decentralized social networks that interoperate with each other. Users of different platforms can communicate and follow each other across the Fediverse, without being locked into one company’s service. Other platforms that are connected to the Fediverse (or will be) are Mastodon and Bluesky.

This is a new approach for Meta as rather than the 'walled garden' social network approach of Facebook this is a more open one.

Potentially this means asking if Threads, Bluesky or Mastodon will 'replace' Twitter might be the wrong question. If they all interoperate then people will use the platform, or platforms, they are most comfortable with. It is early days so we have to watch how the Fediverse implementation develops on different platforms.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

STOP PRESS - Edelman Trust Barometer 2024 is out

The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer was published this morning. As usual it's a meaty document so we haven't had time to analyse it all yet. We could of course use AI to summarise it, but since PRovoke Media has already done an excellent report we'll share that instead.

This year there is a focus on science and innovation. Trust continues to fall, in some cases to alarming levels. The media is the least trusted institution of all, seen as a source of misinformation, disinformation and polarisation.

People believe that societal leaders are purposely trying to mislead them by saying things they know are false - journalists (64%), government leaders (63%) and business leaders (61%).

Download the full Trust Barometer here.

Stuart Bruce

Reuters predicts the journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions of 2024

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has published its journalism, media and technology trends and predictions report. No prizes for guessing it focuses on the disruptive power of artificial intelligence.

It also highlights the link between AI and 2024 being the year of elections. We've already seen generative AI being using to create content for political campaigns, but this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

It won't just be politicians and political parties who will need to deal with AI generated misinformation and disinformation, but companies. If you haven't already updated your crisis communications plans then it needs to be a priority in 2024.

Stuart Bruce

New report on the State of AI in PR in 2024

CommTech company Muck Rack has published the State of AI in PR 2024 report to examine the rapidly evolving role of generative AI in public relations. One of its key findings is that "AI usage" among PR professionals jumped from 28% in March 2023 to 64% in December.

I'm slightly dubious about this figure as there is a huge difference between experimenting with generative AI (where 64% is a terribly low figure as by now every professional should have experimented) and actually using AI properly.

In my LinkedIn newsletter I said that 2024 will be the year when AI moves beyond hype and experimentation to being an integral part of public relations. But this means in-house teams and agencies need to have robust strategies, policies and training in place rapidly. Most haven't.

For many of our consultancy clients the first step is to run an AI for comms briefing workshop for their whole team, or the senior management team.

Stuart Bruce

World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2023 is out

The latest World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2023 is out. Rod Cartwright watched the live launch and has shared some initial highlights.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech tools

Have you tried Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft is the big tech company that is leading the way on AI. Most of the buzz has been about ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot. But there is more than one version of Copilot. Most of the focus has been on Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is a paid product that integrates with Office produces and at the moment is only available to enterprise licence holders (prepared to buy a minimum of 300 licences at $30 per head).

However, Copilot is FREE! What's more it provides access to GPT-4 Turbo, which is the latest version of OpenAI's AI. You can only get that in ChatGPT if you pay for a Plus ($20 per month) or Team ($30 per month) licence. Copilot offers the same for free. It doesn't quite offer everything the paid versions of ChatGPT do, but it almost does.

If you're using the free version of ChatGPT then you're probably better off using Copilot. As well as the web version I've linked to in the headline, there are also Android and iOS apps.

Stuart Bruce