Content creation, media relations and planning were cited as the top three skills in public relations by practitioners in the CIPR State of the Profession survey for 2017. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already making significant inroads to each of these areas. It is enabling practitioners to work smarter and more efficiently. It is enabling us to deliver more for less, and in time is likely to have a significant implication on labour. It's a situation that is repeated in other profession services such as accountancy and legal.

1. Characterising the impact of artificial intelligence
on the public relations business and its workforce
Alastair McCapra, CEO, CIPR
Stephen Waddington, Chief Engagement Officer, Ketchum
and Visiting Professor, Newcastle University

2. #AI inPR Panel members
Chris Dolan, Independent consultant
Kerry Sheehan, Weber Shandwick
Stephen Waddington, Ketchum
Alastair McCapra, CIPR Chief Executive
Matt Silver, Ketchum
Sharon O’Dea, Independent consultant
Andrew Smith, Escherman
Maria Loupa , Liberty Communications
Prof. Anne Gregory, University of Huddersfield
Jean Valin , Valin Strategic Communications
Ben Verinder, Chalkstream
Dr. Jon White, Independent consultant

8. Judgement, ethics,
mentoring, cultural
awareness, public
speaking, etc.
Judgement, ethics,
mentoring, cultural
awareness, public
speaking, etc.
Support for human
decision-making
Support for human
decision-making
Simplifying process/
provides service
Simplifying process
provides service
Monitoring/
automation of tasks
Monitoring/
automation of tasks
AI applied to data AI applied to data
AI deployment in PR, 2018 AI deployment in PR, 2023

9. Preliminary conclusions:
1. AI tools are making rapid progress into every aspect of organisations. No sector,
discipline or level of job will be exempt.
2. AI will offer PR professionals ways of becoming much more productive (e.g.
assisted writing; sentiment analysis; measurement tools).
3. It is not true that managerial or creative jobs will offer a refuge from AI; however
roles that involve a large amount of single-type task (e.g. writing and distributing
press releases) will bear the earliest and deepest impacts.

10. Preliminary conclusions:
4. Entry-level roles will probably be the first to actually disappear; this will pose major
problems for new career entrants and for diversity and inclusion.
5. PR professionals need to find new ways of bringing value to their clients, taking
advantage of new tools and platforms; and working up the value chain.
6. The skills that we currently regard as bring most distinctively related to current PR
roles may be among the first to be automated; more generic abilities and attributes
which deliver quality and integrity will be harder to automate.

11. www.cipr.co.uk/AI

12. Thank you
Stephen Waddington @wadds stephen.waddington@ketchum.com
Alastair McCapra @CIPR_CEO alastairm@cipr.co.uk