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Welcome

Wishing those who celebrate a happy and restful Easter this week! There's lots going on with AI. Food for thought here - is it actually unethical for PR professionals not to use AI? Stuart has written a blog post on this, which I would highly recommend a read of. It's fabulous that the people at LinkedIn are offering us 250 free course choices to get stuck into to improve our CPD including AI literacy. Why not give one of them a go! Isn't it about time you had a reality check about the IT you've paid for? Are you actually getting the value from it that you should, could you be saving money and/or getting better outcomes. You know where to come, we're always here for you, enjoy the bank holiday, you deserve it!

News

Is it unethical for PR professionals not to use AI?

The second most senior judge in England and Wales has said that lawyers may soon have to use artificial intelligence as it is potentially unethical not to. His argument could equally apply to public relations professionals where it offers a new way to think about the ethics of AI in PR.

Stuart has shared his thoughts in a blog post.

Karen Marshall

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Data, measurement, analytics

Spin Sucks releases PESO V3

Ten years ago Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks published the PESO clover leaf graphic. The third version has just been published. Although the PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model is usually associated with Spin Sucks, it was originally developed by the late Don Bartholomew at Fleishman Hillard as early as 2010. The familiar graphic by Gini Dietrich was published much later in 2013.

PR academic Heather Yaxley wrote a fascinating account of the origins of PESO which also includes other earlier models and references including from Forrester, McKinsey, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter, and Edelman,

There is an equally fascinating long comment from Richard Bagnall, former chair of AMEC, sharing his memories of the development of PESO which he believes was used internally and in discussions by people from even early than May 2010. And congratulations to Richard for his Individual Achievement SABRE Award which is being made at the PRovoke EMEA Summit next month.

Although I didn't call it PESO at the same time I'd been thinking about planning and measurement of owned, earned, social and paid from the time I co-founded my PR agency in May 2007. My order is deliberately OESP as it reflects the original importance of each, which is perhaps the same today.

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

People benefit from Microsoft Copilot AI when it saves them 11 minutes a day

Microsoft publishes research to show using Copilot makes people more efficient. Quelle Surprise. It shows that a time saving of 11 minutes per day is the magic number where people start to see value from AI.

However, it comes in the wake of lots of other research that shows the same. The variation tends to be in how much time AI saves, how much more effective it makes people and how much it improves the quality of work, rather than if it does.

Stuart Bruce

Five of this year’s Pulitzer finalists are AI-powered

The Pulitzer Prize for Journalism is one of the pinnacles of journalistic achievement. This year is the first year that the competition has required entrants to disclose if they used generative AI in the process of researching, reporting, or telling their submissions. Five of the 45 finalists did disclose they used AI.

I'm surprised that it's as low as five and wonder if some of the other entries really didn't use AI, or maybe didn't understand or appreciate they had. There is a world of difference between using AI to generate an article and using it to help write an article. The first is unlikely to create anything remotely worthy of winning a prize. The second of using it to assist in wring an article is what I'd have expected and hoped to see a lot more entrants doing.

Stuart Bruce

Suno AI, the start-up with a ChatGPT for music

We've been playing with using Suno inside the consumer version of Microsoft Copilot. Give it a short prompt and it responds with a tune and lyrics that you can listen to sung and played.

Here Rolling Stone takes a look at Suno AI which theoretically will enable everyone to be able to produce their own pro-level songs with artificial intelligence. It asks what does that mean for artists.

Stuart Bruce

XTwitter's ChatGPT rival Grok is now open source

We don't hear a much about Grok, XTwitter's AI model, as we do other more mainstream ones. I doubt the most recent move where Elon Musk has announced the Grok AI chatbot would become open source will make much difference.

Stuart Bruce

Journalists are feeding the AI hype machine

One of the challenges clients talk to us about is the difficulty of filtering the hype around AI to identify what they actually need to do to keep up and get ahead of using AI for public relations and communications. This article looks at how mainstream media journalists might be part of the problem, rather than the solution.

Stuart Bruce

Comms agency Hanover launches AI partnership with InferenceCloud

AI is rapidly creating a significant gap between smaller PR agencies and larger ones. Big global groups are already investing significant sums in developing their own AI tools or external partnerships. Hanover, part of Avenir Global, is the latest.

We've already reported that Publicis is investing €300. BCW, under Corey duBrowa leadership, is another global player making significant strides.

We're working with independent agencies to help them identify how they invest effectively in AI and upskill their teams to ensure they don't get left behind.

Stuart Bruce

Research and reports

Ofcom research on the impact of social media on online news

Ofcom is a treasure trove of useful research about the internet, social media and online media in the UK. Its latest research looks at the impact of social media on online news. It's just published today so I'm still digesting the results.

One of the most interesting points in the summary is "Social media platforms expose people to a lot of different news outlets. However, they tend to expose them to a narrower range of news topics than they might encounter on a traditional news website."

This is one of the points I raise when running PR training. PR professional need to have a broad grasp of current affairs and the news agenda. It's not enough to just know about what they do or are interested in. The way social media and online media work means that this requires effort on their part to counteract the problems highlighted by the Ofcom research.

Stuart Bruce

Professional practice

LinkedIn offers 250 free AI courses

If you have a paid LinkedIn account you have access to LinkedIn Learning. There are some great learning resources for anyone who is doing continuous professional development (that should be all of us!). Until 5 April you can access 250 AI courses for free, even if you don't have a premium LinkedIn account. We'll be using some of them to improve our own knowledge and skills and recommending some to our clients.

🤖 Building AI Literacy 🌱 Responsible AI Foundations 💡 Develop Your Prompt Engineering Skills 🏢 Integrating Generative AI into Business Strategy 🌟 Building Career Agility and Resilience in the Age of AI

Thanks to Jonathan Palmer, head of content solutions EMEA and LATAM for highlighting them.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech newswatch

New NewsGuard tool helps brands counter disinformation

It's not just governments and politicians that face the risk of misinformation and disinformation. NewsGuard is rolling out a new tool to help companies and brands manage reputational risk by detecting disinformation targeting them online.

Stuart Bruce