Generative AI inches along in public relations [PR Tech Sum 58]

The internet received similar levels of hype in 1999, receded with the dot-com bust and then came back with slow and steady progress; generative AI in public relations seems to be evolving in the same way

If you can excuse the rounding error, generative AI has been more or less mainstream for about two years. So, what’s been the impact on PR and corporate communications?

Having covered this closely now for a long time (news summaries, product briefings and product reviews) here’s what I think:

Some PR tech vendors were quick to add generative AI, while others were slow; generally, the newer and younger companies were quick to respond while some industry’s incumbents are just getting around to it now;

There are three generative AI tools in use; most PR vendors white label Open AI’s technology, two white label Google and one, Agility PR Solutions, has its own native tool;

The best use cases are for brainstorming, editing and providing alternative options for headlines and subheadlines; it’s also helping monitoring tools to better understand sentiment and context, but that’s expensive and you need high volumes of coverage to be worthwhile.

There’s one more thing: generative AI hasn’t replaced PR people and solution providers are very careful to emphasize this point. It can do tasks, but it can’t do a job. You can’t merely prompt it to “do PR” but you can’t prompt it to do tasks which collectively make up “PR.”

None of this naysaying it’s just pragmatism. The internet received a similar level of hype in 1999. Things receded and analyst firms were called out for making unsubstantiated predictions. Yet things eventually improved.

About a decade later, Web 2.0 brought all sorts of slick uses and solved accessibility problems. Many of these would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Today, we can’t imagine life without it. We’re headed in that direction with generative AI too.

And now onward with this month’s PR tech sum. It covers August and September as news from the PR software community has been slow recently.

1. Google Gemini to write press releases for PR Newswire

“Generate high-quality press releases with just a few clicks.”

That’s the first bullet point PR Newswire used to describe its new generative AI feature. The Cision-owned newswire service says, “The AI algorithm analyzes your input and crafts compelling content tailored to your industry and target audience.”

The announcement says its generative AI is “powered by enterprise-level Google Gemini,” which would make it the second vendor I’m aware of that opted for Google over Open AI. A new PR tool named PRophet, which is part of the Stagwell portfolio, announced generative AI features from Google Gemini earlier this year.

The new feature will also match a brand “voice.” For example, you can instruct the AI to write in a professional, or humorous tone if desired. This has become a common feature in other generative AI tools geared to public relations.

Cision stepped lightly around the “use AI to write press releases” message in its press release:

“While we are eager to share this new AI solution as an option for our customers, we also recognize that there is no replacement for the human creative process,” said an executive in the announcement. “This is intended to be an added resource to help communicators in their work.”

2. Earnings + Financing

Agility PR Solutions’ parent company Innodata reported sales grew to $36.2 million in its Q2 earnings announcement. It blamed a dip in sequential margins on recruiting costs and raised revenue guidance for the full year to 60% or more.

Germany-based Staffbase an internal communications platform, said it “secured a revolving credit facility in an amount of up to €50 million from J.P. Morgan and KfW” to fuel growth. Separately the company has changed its business structure from GmbH, which is similar to an LLC in the U.S. to “Societas Europaea (SE) and will now operate under the name Staffbase SE.”

3. People on the move

Joanna Drabent is stepping down as CEO of Prowly. She is being replaced by co-founder Sebastian Przyborowski who has been serving as the chief product officer. Prowly was acquired by the SEO software vendor Semrush in 2020.

Samantha Deeks has stepped away from Onclusive. No reason was noted. Samantha founded a PR workflow software product called PRGloo. PRGloo was acquired by Onclusive in a three-way merger fueled by private equity announced in early 2022.

Tanya Thomas was appointed as EVP of EMEA for the investor relations platform Q4.

4. Mentions

New BFFs. Prowly partnered with TVEyes to broadcast media monitoring solutions. TVEyes is a white-label partner to several media monitoring tools for providing broadcast monitoring.

Gobble-gobble. Muck Rack said it acquired Keyhole for social media monitoring. The two companies first partnered up in December 2023.

Mind the gap. GlobeNewswire said its “tools and services, including earnings calls, webcasts, IR websites,” and news distribution are available on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) curated Marketplace. Separately, the company said it has expanded press release distribution in Germany and streamlined the user experience.

Slow start. Cision is trying to reach the APAC market with its media monitoring tool CisionOne. It first rolled out the product in the UK a year ago, however, it’s unclear how the new product is different or better. Cision has several other monitoring tools from its zest for acquisitions with overlapping features including the traditional product, Bandwatch and BuzzSumo.