BOOK REVIEW: AI for Public Relations: A how-to guide for implementation and management

AI for Public Relations: A how-to guide for implementation and management
Edited by Ben Verinder and Stephen Waddington
Kogan Page, 2026, 265 pages

In hindsight, I may have been over-optimistic about the promise of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web in those heady ‘markets are conversations’ days at the end of the last millennium.

I’ll certainly confess to being over-optimistic about the likely impact of social media in the early years of this century, when blogging first brought publishing power to the people.

Perhaps that’s why I now take an instinctively pessimistic view of the likely impacts of artificial intelligence (AI).

This is certainly a good moment to pause and reflect, and I welcome this newly-published book containing 16 chapters from various contributors, all looking at AI from a public relations perspective.

As the introduction acknowledges, the conversation has moved beyond whether practitioners should use AI to whether we use it effectively and responsibly, and to the extent to which it adds value – or eliminates jobs.

This book is alert to the many risks as well as the opportunities presented by AI.

It also serves as a primer for those needing a quick catch up. Here’s Andrew Bruce Smith explaining why large language models (LLMs) hallucinate – produce credible sounding inaccuracies.

And here’s his explanation of ‘agentic AI’, AI that can perform complex tasks autonomously.

‘As public relations practitioners grapple with shrinking newsrooms, accelerated news cycles and fragmented audience attention, agentic AI offers capabilities in data analysis, personalized engagement and operational efficiency, supporting crisis communications, media relations, content creation and strategic planning.’ But ‘agentic AI brings its own litany of ethical, governance and performance concerns.’

Stephen Waddington explains where we are now:

Among the implications is that ‘public relations teams need to start thinking in terms of AI as a stakeholder’ in this emerging age of generative engine optimisation (GEO). It’s also leading to a revival in ‘traditional’ media relations as trusted media titles are important sources for AI.

Editors Stephen Waddington and Ben Verinder collaborated with CIPR President Farzana Baduel on a pivotal chapter looking at AI and public relations management.

The focus here shifts from technology to purpose and process, and the implications are more worrying for aspects of the public relations function. ‘Tasks that once justified entire roles, such as media monitoring, report compilation and coverage analysis, can now be completed by AI systems in minutes rather than hours.’ They warn that ‘the evolution from managing people to managing automated processes is a fundamental deskilling of the management function’ and that entry-level opportunities are being especially impacted.

A worrying result will be the gradual atrophying of human judgement as ‘experienced public relations counsel risks being replaced by algorithmic certainty.’ Later they warn about ‘an accelerated commoditization of strategic thinking, which threatens the practice’s value proposition.’

Let me spell out the implication of this: that there will be fewer public relations advisers in future, and the work will be less human, less nuanced, and arguably less satisfying.

Useful chapters follow by Antony Mayfield on building AI-ready teams in which he presents his four-step literacy ladder; there are separate chapters on AI adoption for agency (by Jeff Beringer and Jonny Bentwood) and for in-house teams (Serena Michell); on AI policies (Amy Mollett); and on the contribution of public relations to shaping AI’s role (Anne Gregory and Swati Virmani) which addresses questions of ethics.

There’s one final warning from the editors. Adapting Daniel Kahneman’s model of quick, emotional thought (System 1) contrasted with deliberative, rational thought (System 2) they suggest the danger in ‘System 0’ thinking.

‘We define System 0 thinking as AI adoption without critical reflection… It’s the opposite of keeping the human in the loop.’

Any collection of contributed chapters risks some unevenness of tone and some repetitiveness. But the central message of this book is clear: we should not be blind to the risks even as we must move to seize the opportunities presented by AI.

Why even publish a book on such a fast-developing field? It helps us to reflect on where we are now and helps us envisage likely future scenarios.