AI won’t steal your job from you if you learn how to harness it

The explosion of AI in the last few years has meant that most people likely will have used, explored, questioned or flat-out avoided AI in their personal and professional lives. The use and infiltration of AI into the systems and processes we use has brought with it a mix of excitement, concern and desire to understand its capabilities and limitations.

Muck Rack’s 2025 State of AI report showed that around three-quarters of PR professionals were using generative AI at work, almost three times the number reported two years prior. Previously held concerns and scepticism about using AI in communications work appear to be receding, with users reporting time savings, higher-quality work and better job satisfaction as a result.

But do PR professionals really understand the full potential of AI? Currently, AI is primarily used in communications for content creation – drafting press releases, briefing notes and social media content. However, there is an opportunity to harness AI’s untapped capabilities, namely, delivering meaningful measurement and evaluation that demonstrates the value of PR within an organisation.

It is not enough to simply have large language models (LLMs) available to use at work. PR professionals must ensure: AI is assimilated into their everyday work through training and exploration of tools; they understand the ethical risks and guardrails that must be implemented; that they are using AI to complement their human expertise.

Adoption to assimilation

It is unusual to find an organisation operating today that is not using AI in some form whether through LLMs like ChatGPT and Copilot, notetaking technology that records meeting minutes and actions, or third-party systems and tools that provide analysis and insight.

The introduction of AI into the workplace has triggered concerns about job displacement in PR and communications, but recently, there has been more acceptance of the need to understand and utilise AI rather than see it as an impediment. USC Annenberg Centre for Public Relation’s report on AI states that ‘communicators have moved beyond their initial fear and hype surrounding AI, with most leveraging AI in their daily work, making them more excited about what they do’.

Anne Perera’s research into AI in PR found that 64% of PR professionals feel knowledgeable about AI but only 48% reported frequent use. One reason could be a lack of confidence or knowledge about AI’s capabilities. In 2025, over a third of practitioners reported access to AI training at work (up from 21% in 2024), but 73% expressed a desire for more training. Furthermore, Muck Rack’s report found that in 2025, 38% of companies had AI policies in place which 96% of practitioners either ‘strictly’ or ‘mostly’ followed.

Clearly there is an appetite amongst PR professionals to expand and develop their AI skills beyond content creation and for AI to not just be adopted but assimilated into their work. The introduction of workplace AI training and policies can play a key part in the assimilation process helping PR professionals feel equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and guardrails to help them confidently explore AI’s capabilities.

Ethical considerations

Assimilating AI into PR increases the need for clear ethical guardrails. Several professional bodies have recently released or updated their guidance on AI ethics highlighting the importance of transparency, accuracy, human oversight and privacy:

• The PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards revised its 2023 “Promise and Pitfalls” guidance on AI in 2025.
• The IPRA built upon their 2023 AI and PR Guidelines and the 2021 UNESCO AI Principles to create its 2025 ‘Gold Paper 19: Ethical Standards and Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations’.
• The ICCO released their ‘Principles for Ethical Use of AI in Public Relations’ in 2023.

The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management explored PR professionals’ attitudes to ethics in relation to AI. They found that over 85% of practitioners felt at least ‘somewhat confident’ navigating the ethical implications of AI and that over a quarter prioritise ethics as their ‘most important AI-related responsibility.’

PR professionals must stay informed about emerging risks and update internal policies regularly to maintain trust and credibility. But AI develops rapidly. Therefore, introducing a process for using AI will help mitigate risks. This could include guidance on which LLMs are approved for use by your organisation, a reminder to withhold company or client-sensitive information, implementing human-review checkpoints, and having a basic ethics checklist for reference.

Finding the right balance

Harnessing AI’s capabilities in combination with human input is the key to success for PR professionals who want to assimilate technological advancements into their everyday work.

Research indicates that although some practitioners are sceptical about their job security due to the continued integration of AI in the workplace, many use it on a daily basis, understand the time-saving benefits, and appreciate the ethical considerations.

But senior employees must reassure and guide junior employees who tend to be more anxious about job depletion due to the prospect of task automation becoming dominated by AI. Understanding that task automation will free up time to explore analytics, interrogate campaign efficacy, and improve stakeholder relationships should be seen as a positive.

The model for success is a combination of AI and human input. Humans can frame problems, understand context and interpret nuance whilst AI accelerates processes and dives deeper into analytics. If AI is properly harnessed by PR professionals, it can help prove the business value of PR more than ever.

Meaningful measurement

Measurement and evaluation have the potential to demonstrate the value of what PR professionals do, exemplifying our expertise and solidifying our credibility. However, PR evaluation has long been seen as ‘difficult’ or has been too simplistic, relying on AVEs or the number of media mentions. The Barcelona Principles emphasise the importance of planning, measurement and evaluation in PR, but principle number five highlights a particular issue in PR: AVEs are not the value of communication.

Moving beyond AVEs and one-dimensional measurement metrics will enable PR professionals to demonstrate their contribution to the strategic goals of an organisation. This does not have to be an onerous task as AI- enabled measurement metrics and tools can be applied to existing and well-used planning and evaluation processes.

Pre-emptive evaluation

Evaluating PR activity ahead of implementation to understand its efficacy and feasibility.

Here’s how AI can help:

• Audience insights – AI can help understand how your key stakeholder groups will respond to and engage with a campaign. At Rathbones, we work with an agency who have built an AI model that reflects the opinions and experiences of our key stakeholder groups. Each group has an AI chatbot profile in which we can ask questions about their feelings on certain topics such as ESG, retirement or housing, their typical media consumption habits, and how they like to engage with the company. This enables us to tailor campaigns and PR activity to different stakeholder groups based on robust evidence that we can access in a matter of seconds.

• Sentiment analysis – Social listening tools can predict sentiment on certain topics, individuals or companies based on historic data and provide an overview of the potential. This can help provide guidance on which topics or channels might need careful handling or avoidance.

Formative evaluation

Making adjustments and opening feedback loops during a campaign.

Here’s how AI can help:

• Media monitoring – Today, media monitoring tools can go beyond just showing which outlets covered your campaign. The media monitoring system we use at Rathbones incorporates AI to provide us with live updates on sentiment, engagement and how the coverage aligns with our strategic goals. This enables us to make adjustments where necessary, for example if engagement is lower than expected with a key audience, we can use the media monitoring tool to explore where they are engaged instead.
• Crisis detection – Monitoring tools can also identify spikes in activity and send regular alerts based on keywords or topics. You can instruct AI models to indicate a spike as soon as a topic is mentioned once, or only if it is mentioned 10 times in an hour. The customisation potential of the tools allows for a tailor-made crisis-detection system that does not require time spent manually sifting through content.

Summative evaluation

Considering all aspects of the campaign once it has concluded.

Here’s how AI can help:

• Share of voice (SOV) – AI can provide insights that go beyond traditional SOV. We use a model at Rathbones that can track our SOV on specific topics in comparison to our chosen This can be broken down into key spokespeople, media outlets and sentiment. This enables us to understand if our PR activity has increased our visibility in the media on specific topics of conversation. Furthermore, the wealth of information that is produced in the space of minutes allows time to be better used on improving our approach for the next campaign.
• Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) – As more people turn to LLMs to make enquiries rather than in traditional search engines, it is important to understand how these models rank information and sources. Let’s say we had conducted a campaign aimed at promoting our ability to help people plan for retirement. Following the campaign, we would ask an LLM a series of typical questions someone might ask about the topic, for example ‘How can I prepare for retirement?’. We can then see if Rathbones appears in the search results or if any of the articles written as a result of the campaign are cited as sources. This indicates that the LLM sees our content as trusted and will use it in similar queries.

Adapting to the future

Our approach to measurement and evaluation must adapt to the tools we now have at our disposal. AI tools unlock a plethora of metrics that can offer deeper insight into the efficacy of PR activity, and more helpfully, draw a clear line between PR activity and business objectives.

AI is developing at speed and there is no way of knowing what the future will look like. What we do know is that although many people still harbour fears and concerns about the impact of AI on the PR industry, there is an appetite for learning, with research showing that if AI is properly understood and assimilated it can augment PR practice.

Engaging with training on new systems, development of policies and ethical guidance, and utilisation of tools that offer in-depth, meaningful measurement and evaluation has been shown to provide PR professionals with time savings, higher quality of work, and perhaps most importantly, better job satisfaction.

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Frances McNab’s perspective on studying for the CIPR Professional PR Diploma 

Frances prepared this article for a CIPR Professional Diploma assignment while studying with PR Academy.

Q1: For you, what do you see as the key benefits of having the PR Diploma qualification?

The CIPR Diploma provides the theoretical backing to everything you do as a PR. Being able to combine the theory with what you learn on the job puts you in a strong position at a time when the future of PR can feel uncertain. The Diploma reinforces the importance of core PR skills that AI cannot replicate such as judgement, ethical considerations and building trust.

Q2: What has been your favourite part of the CIPR PR Diploma course so far?

Writing the thought leadership piece. It encouraged me to think more carefully about the impact of AI on PR now and in the future. The assignment helped me reframe my approach to AI, embracing its capabilities rather than seeing it as a threat.

Q3: Have you yet been able to apply any of the learning, and if so, how?

Yes, particularly in relation to measurement. Over the past couple of years in my role, I have overseen the creation and establishment of an internal press office with the Diploma reinforcing the importance of meaningful measurement. It has helped us shift reporting away from outputs alone towards impact and measures such as share of voice and sentiment.

About the CIPR Professional PR Diploma 

The PR Diploma is a Master’s level qualification for more experienced practitioners who are looking to underpin what they do with theory and contemporary models.  Topics include PR strategy and planning, content management, media and engagement, measurement and evaluation, and PR leadership and process improvement. 

You have two years to complete it, but with PR Academy, you set your own study pace and many students finish in about ten months. 

Read our Complete Guide to CIPR Qualifications