Welcome
Jesus, Shakespeare, napkins and Bluesky is a PR's delight
We've an eclectic mix of stories in theis issue of PR Futurist. This includes a great case study about how PwC's corporate affairs team is starting to use AI (TL;DR it's culture not technology).
Two stories reveal how people prefer AI poetry and art to human poetry and art. That's real people, not 'simulation agents' as Stanford and Google can now create an AI 'you' to replicate your personality after a two-hour AI interview.
We've got three great AI tools. Mistral's le Chat is a free AI companion to take on ChatGPT, while Napkin.ai turns your text into visuals (and it's still free). The third is yet another raft of improvements to Microsoft Copilot, making it even more powerful and useful.
As usual let us know what you think and if you spot something of interest send it our way.
Stuart Bruce | PR Futurist
News
Why journalists, politicos and PRs are flocking to Bluesky
PRMoment asked a selection of industry experts to comment on why social media app Bluesky has taken off in the last few weeks. I was one of those asked to comment.
For 18+ months Bluesky looked like a great XTwitter competitor, except it didn't have enough relevant users. It has finally reached the tipping point and is adding hundreds of thousands of users every day and now has 21+ million.
I (and most of the Purposeful Relations team) have been on Bluesky since the early days when it was still invite only and just 80k users. I've verified my identity so you can find me as @stuartbruce.biz
Bluesky combines ease of use with powerful optional features such as verifying your personal or company account with your domain, creating lists and Starter Packs, and creating custom feeds.
If you don't already have a Bluesky account, then you should create one ASAP. To get you started I've created several lists of interesting accounts including UK journalists, public relations and communications, UK politics and policy and more.
Meanwhile the exodus from XTwitter continues. PRovoke has just quit and set-up accounts on Bluesky.
And what of Meta's Threads? I joined as soon as it was launch. But I've never liked it. The main feed and following feed are too busy. It's impossible to use practically as it's just a random stream that suck up time. XTwitter and Bluesky are easy as I can just look at the list I'm interested in when I need to.
The FT's John Burn-Murdoch shared data that shows Bluesky's active users have already overtaken Threads, despite Threads theoretically having far more users.
My advice is that for most brands and consumer PR XTwitter no longer has value (it was never a primary channel). However, for corporate affairs or 'serious' issue it is still best to be on both XTwitter and Bluesky.
Stuart Bruce
prmoment.com
AI, digital and social
AI-powered Jesus in Swiss church
AI is popping up everywhere. But an AI Jesus isn't one I'd considered. But that's exactly what the small Peter’s chapel in Lucerne has done. It has installed a computer and display in its confessional booth. The AI system is trained on theological texts. Visitors can ask questions and see and hear them answered by a projection of Jesus beamed through the latticework of the confessional booth.
The church stresses the AI system is not for confessions. Would you take the opportunity to talk to a virtual Jesus?
Stuart Bruce
theguardian.com
People prefer AI poetry to real poetry
An article in Nature reveals research shows non-expert readers can't distinguish AI-generated poetry from human-written poetry. It even identified that the AI poetry is often preferred to the human poetry or writing such as Shakespeare.
And that brings us to our next story about AI-generated art below.
Stuart Bruce
nature.com
People prefer AI art to real art
Another study asked 11,000 people to classify fifty pictures as either human art or AI-generated art. As in the poetry study it found that most people couldn't tell the difference. And once again most people (60%) preferred the AI art to the human art.
If you're tempted to sneer at those who can't tell the difference then you should look at the test yourself to see how many you are certain of the answer.
I think both the writing and the art examples highlight an element of snobbery in society. I've already seen people expressing alarm at AI's assault on creativity and artistic integrity. I didn't see many of these knowledge workers expressing the same alarm when the robots came and replaced skilled manual workers in factories.
Stuart Bruce
astralcodexten.com
Can AI replicate your personality?
Now you're possibly thinking that your creative writing and art reflects you and your personality so AI can't express your thoughts and feelings. Can it?
New research by Stanford and Google's DeepMind says it can. In the experiment people had a two hour conversation about their childhood, formative memories, careers and thoughts on political issues, amongst other topics.
That is enought to accurately capture your values and preferences. The result is an AI 'you' which the research paper calls simulation agents.
The relevance for PR and communications is these simulation agents could be used for studies and research that would be challenging to do with real people. Barriers that simulation agents might help with include niche audiences, expense, time, controversial or ethical issues. You could use them to test messaging or campaign ideas to see how people would respond to them. You could test difficult issues such as disinformation or misinformation where ethically and practically it would be hard to do with real people.
Stuart Bruce
technologyreview.com
Case studies
How PwC’s corporate affairs team is turning AI theory into everyday benefits
PwC's Daryl Drabinsky, who leads AI strategy and implementation efforts for PwC’s communications and corporate affairs team has shared some of its learnings. He makes the point that AI technology is only a small part of the equation. It's about putting it into practice so people use it and benefit from it.
Drabinsky explains "It’s about building that [memory] muscle and exercising it, You can teach someone the theory, but until they practice, it does not really stick.”
Public examples of AI use for communications and corporate affairs are still rare. It's new and companies are learning how to do it. It gives them competitive advantage so not many are yet sharing their successes, failures and learnings.
It's reassuring that PwC's approach is similar to how Purposeful Relations work with clients. It's about indentifying tasks and workflows where AI can help. Then it's choosing the right tools. People then need training, but it's also about practicing and applying them to real world scenarios.
If you want to find out how we can help you to introduce, but more importantly embed AI into your culture and processes then book a free, no obligation consultation with Stuart Bruce.
Tim Bailey
ragan.com
CommTech tools
Mistral AI launches free advanced ChatGPT competitor
Mistral is a European AI large language model that until now has had a relatively low profile. However, all that might now change as it has launched powerful new features in le Chat, a free alternative AI assistant to ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity etc.
It's not shy about showing how its free features compare to competitors. It includes the latest AI model, web search with citations, canvas for exploring and editing ideas, image generation, image and document analysis and task agents all in a single platform.
I've been having a play and it is pretty impressive. However, you have to remember it is a free tool and that it can use your data to "Train or improve our Models and Services".
Have a play and let us know what you think.
Stuart Bruce
mistral.ai
Napkin.ai creates visuals from your texts
Napkin.ai is a tool that's been around for awhile. I wasn't that impressed when I first looked ages ago. It creates visuals from your text. It is currently free so rather than just go with my opinion have a go while it is still in free beta.
My initial take was its user interface isn't at all intuitive. My second issue was it's a bit pointless as all it does is create cliched visuals to explain your text. The problem is its often easier to understand just by reading the text. The visual is just a a pretty picture for the sake of it.
However, I've seen lots of people liking it so I've given it another go.
I still think it's not the easiest tool to use. It doesn't have menus and you have to reply on incomprehensible icons where hovering over them doesn't tell you what they do. THat probably means it does things I haven't figured out yet.
When it creates a visual it provides lots of different ideas and versions. Except personally I didn't find many of them very good so in reality it's a false choice.
You can see one of my Napkin.ai experiments here where I've shared the process to create the PR Futurist newsletter. I described the process with a short prompt explaining how I do it. It then generated a longer document to detail the process. It got that right. But so would any AI tool.
For each section you can hover on the lefthand side and it will display an icon to visualise that section. The image shows the visual for the summary. it's correct, but I'm not sure it is useful or illuminating. Some of the multiple alternatives were just images that confused rather than clarifying.
To me an infographic is meant to make something easier to understand. I'm not convinced Napkin.ai does that. If you are looking for pretty images then it does an okay job of that.
I'm going to perservere to see if I can make it more useful.
I'd love to know what you think of Napkin.ai.
Stuart Bruce
napkin.ai
Microsoft Copilot beefs up actions and agents to make it even more powerful
Microsoft is continuing to innovate rapidly with Copilot. At its recent Ignite conference it announced a raft of improvements including:
- Copilot Actions to automate everyday repetitive tasks with simple prompts.
- Copilot Pages for dynamic, persistent AI collaboration within teams.
- Copilot in Teams to understand, recap, and answer questions based on shared visual content.
- Copilot in PowerPoint can translate entire presentations into 40+ languages while maintaining design.
- Copilot in Outlook can help schedule focus time, one-on-ones, and draft meeting agendas.
- SharePoint agent to quickly access project details, summarize memos, and find documents.
- Interpreter agent in Teams for real-time speech-to-speech interpretation with simulated voice.
- Employee Self-Service agent to answer HR and IT questions and complete key tasks.
- Facilitator agent to take real-time notes in Teams meetings and chats.
- Project Manager agent to automate plan creation and complete tasks in Planner.
The significance of all these is by integrating AI agents directly into Microsoft 365 it normalises AI use as it makes it easily and directly accessible to millions of people in their daily workflows, Once AI use is a natural part of daily life people will be more likely to accept more advanced uses.
Stuart Bruce
microsoft.com