🚀 PR Futurist #83 🤕 Broken fingers 📰 AI and journalism expert panel 🤯 AI as a stakeholder |

Welcome

A series of unfortunate events

A series of unfortunate events is a great book and TV series, but in this case the unfortunate events happened to Stuart and meant we missed publishing last Monday's PR Futurist.

On Sunday he lost his prescription glasses so had to resort to using his prescription sunglasses. He spent most of Monday morning searching and at the opticians to get replacements.

On Tuesday morning he had a great time at the 72Point panel about AI in PR and journalism. Unfortunately, on his way to his next meeting he was hit by a rogue cyclist which resulted in a painful broken finger.

Now PR Futurist has finally arrived it's got some great stories including AI's impact on employment rights, free passes to the AMEC global summit, real time deepfakes and a thought-provoking piece that asks if we should consider AI to be a stakeholder.

Karen Marshall

News

Speaking about AI at PRWeek's PR360

Next week Stuart is speaking at PRWeek's flagship PR360 conference. He will join communications industry leaders to talk about AI, PR and comms on a panel with Samsung, Plum and chaired by Danny Rogers, editor-in-chief of PRWeek.

The panel will discuss:

Friend or Foe? How have (or haven’t) you been using AI in your PR and Comms?
Becoming part of your team, not replacing your people: leveraging AI to increase efficiency and as a starting point for creativity and content
Building a toolkit and preparing your teams for the future of PR and comms with AI - what will be essential in 2024 and beyond?

Stuart Bruce

Exploring the impact of AI in PR and journalism

Last week Stuart was one of the expert panelists for 72Point's breakfast roundtable at The Ivy discussing the profound influence of artificial intelligence on public relations, journalism, and visual communication. The event featured insightful discussions and demonstrations on the role of AI in shaping content creation, crisis management, and ethical considerations.

Stuart's fellow panelists were Karyn Fleeting who leads on AI for Reach plc and acclaimed AI artist Duncan Thomsen.

You can read more about it on the 72Point blog and watch the full discussion here.

72Point is a client.

Karen Marshall

Corporate affairs

Said Business School argues AI is not just a technology, but has become a stakeholder

When I talk to corporate communications leaders about AI one of the key points I make is that AI is rapidly replacing Google search as the world's most important reputation management engine.

It's a thought that Rupert Younger, director at Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford shares. He has written a piece on how AI has moved beyond simply being a technology to become an important stakeholder for organisations today.

Corporate communications leaders don't just need to think about how (how, not if) to use AI for corporate affairs.

Corporate communications leaders also need to think about how AI is becoming an influencer and what influences AI.

Stuart Bruce

How should artificial intelligence impact employment rights?

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the UK has published its AI at work bill. It's an important piece of work that has been a year in creation and involved a wide range of stakeholders from cross-party politicians, trade unions, business bodies, think tanks, universities and more. It's an extremely detailed and comprehensive piece of work.

At Purposeful Relations a key main point we make to clients is the need for an ethical AI policy. A frequent example I cite where companies might get it wrong is human resources. The new TUC AI at work bill highlights why I think it's an issue for companies and more importantly the bill provides a pathway for thinking about the ethical use of AI.

Disclaimer - I know some of the people involved in the project, but didn't personally participate.

Stuart Bruce

Can the US government hire 100 chief AI officers by the end of May?

The US government's plan is to lead the way in AI governance by using federal agencies to set precedents for the private sector and other countries to learn from. It's a lofty ambition as it means it needs to appoint around 100 chief AI officers by the end of May.

For corporate communications leaders this highlights the importance of their organisations creating ethical AI policies. The TUC's AI at work bill is an example of one of the issues that need to be considered.

Stuart Bruce

Get in touch

When's your renewal date?

We all use a use online software in your day-to-day work, but do you know when each of the packages is due for renewal? Like car insurance, you should never let your contract roll over unless you have had a disccusion with the vendor about their best price.

This is just one part of our CommsTransform™ process, which includes an audit of ALL your IT related expenditure and highlights:

where you can get more from your subscriptions
and useful functionality you were not aware of.

The audit can pay for itself by triming your expenditure without losing access to the key software.

Book a call to discuss how Purposeful Relations can help you get best value for money.

Data, measurement, analytics

Free virtual passes to the AMEC Global Summit

The annual AMEC Global Summit is the world's most important event to learn about the latest best practice in communications measurement and evaluation. Thanks to the amazing generosity of Mary Beth West AMEC has 200 virtual passes to offer free to students and academics.

The summit is on 21-23 May in Sofia, Bulgaria. I'll be there in person along with Tim. If you're eligible for one of the free virtual passes you need to apply before 11 May.

Stuart Bruce

Crisis communication

Employee creates deep fake audio to frame his boss

Deep fakes aren't just something that can damage celebrities and politicians. This is an example of how a disgruntled employee used deepfake audio to smear their boss by creating audio of them making racist remarks. Does your crisis comms plan cover this?

Stuart Bruce

AI, digital and social

Lifelike audio-driven talking faces generated in real time

By now we've all seen numerous deepfakes of realistic digital humans. But a Microsoft research team has taken this a step further. Previous examples needed training with video and audio to be able to create replicas. Microsoft's VASA-1 creates lifelike audio-driven talking faces in real time with precise lip-audio sync, lifelike facial behavior, and naturalistic head movements.

Visit the VASA-1 page to see the videos.

It's equally exciting and scary. At this stage it's just a research project with no product release planned.

Many of those that find it scary or alarming talk about how we can stop it. The reality is it's unlikely we can. Even if big companies are regulated or restricted there will always be new developers or open source projects that aren't 'owned' by a single entity.

The reality is we need to learn to live with the new reality. Corporate communications professionals are in the front line. Are you ready?

Stuart Bruce

Microsoft announces new AI office in UK

Microsoft is opening a new office in London dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) research and development. Microsoft recently hired Mustafa Suleyman to be EVP and CEO of its newly created consumer AI unit, Microsoft AI. Suleyman is the British founder of AI firm DeepMind which was acquired by Google in 2014. He later founded Inflection AI, the company behind Pi 'the digital chief of staff'. Many of Inflection AI's staff also joined Microsoft AI.

Suleyman explains more about the new office in a personal blog post. He says: "There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the U.K., and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub. "

Stuart Bruce

Poe now lets you chat with multiple AIs in a single conversation

One of the challenges of using AI is the plethora of tools, bots and large language models to choose from. Each has strengths and weaknesses, but these are constantly changing.

The Poe chatbot now lets you chat with multiple bots in a single thread. As you query a bot on Poe, you now can compare answers from recommended bots with one click, and summon any bot you prefer by @-mentioning the bot - all within the same conversation thread. This should make it easier to compare results from different bots and even use a combination of models at different steps of the workflow.

There are other tools that let you use multiple platforms including You and Team-GPT. The most well-known tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini are restricted to their parent's large language models.

Stuart Bruce

Case studies

How Moderna is ensuring all its people use AI

The adoption of any change or new technology is always more challenging in regulated industries like pharmaceuticals and financial services. That's what makes this OpenAI case study about Moderna particularly interesting.

Moderna’s ambitious objective was to achieve 100% adoption and proficiency of generative AI by all its people with access to digital solutions in six months. The key to this wasn't just technology, but cultural change.

Those users include corporate communications and brand teams. Examples include a custom GPT that helps prepare slides for quarterly earnings calls, and another GPT that helps convert biotech terminology into approachable language for investor communications.

“Sometimes we’re so in our own world, and AI helps the brand think beyond that,” explained Kate Cronin, Chief Brand Officer of Moderna. “What would my mother want to know about Moderna, versus a regulator, versus a doctor? How do we tell our story in an effective way across different audiences? That’s where I think there’s a huge opportunity.”

Stuart Bruce

Professional practice

PR firms race to launch internal AI tools

This is an interesting piece that summarises what PR firms are doing to get to grips with AI. At Purposeful Relations we see an increasing gap opening up between in-house corporate communications teams and PR agencies.

In-house teams, big and small, are willing to invest time and money into AI and are determined not to get left behind. They want to invest in expert advice, training and tools.

This is in stark contrast to PR agencies and public affairs consultancies where there is lots of interest, but a reluctance to invest. The PR firms named in this article, and those we're working with, are the ones that understand effective integration of AI is essential to maintain their competitive edge.

As my recent article explained it's even potentially unethical not to use AI.

Stuart Bruce

WHO launches new toolkit to help health professionals to communicate about climate change

The World Health Organisation has created a new toolkit to help health professionals effectively communicate about climate change and health. Health professionals are well-placed to play a unique role in helping their communities understand climate change, protect themselves, and realize the health benefits of climate solutions.

Stuart Bruce

CommTech newswatch

Hootsuite acquires Talkwalker

Big news in the CommTech tool space as veteran social media management platform Hootsuite acquires social listening platform Talkwalker. These acquisitions don't always offer benefits to customers as integrating tools is often clunky and doesn't lead to the cost savings many would expect.

I used to be a big fan of Hootsuite as at one time it was pretty much the only game in town for social media management. But those days are long gone. It now has hundreds of competitors. Some are more powerful, and more expensive. Lots are as good, or almost as good, and cheaper.

Hootsuite's one remaining advantage is its historic popularity mean it's the tool many people already know how to use.

One to watch.

Stuart Bruce