From a scam-baiting “AI granny” called Daisy to smart glasses with AI “superpowers,” there’s no disputing artificial intelligence is evolving in weird and wonderful ways. For those of us in PR and communication, it’s also quickly becoming indispensable for managing our neverending to-do list, and makes us fly through repetitive tasks.
Wondering how to capitalize on the possibilities? Our go-to list of the 10 best ways to use AI in PR is an excellent place to start.
Why To Use AI Tools in PR
First, a caveat: AI doesn’t replace human creativity but is a strategic game-changer. AI will and should not replace the creative aspects of the job, but it will certainly take over the mundane tasks.
Even when you're short on time, don't simply publish your ai-generated content without editing it. That content will be bland and boring. AI is wonderful for content drafting, but us public relations professionals will still need to give the content an edge — it's the human element that makes our pieces interesing.
The latest tools can add hours to your day and days to your month by handling everything from mundane, routine tasks to complex projects usually managed by large teams.
Tools like ChatGPT, Jasper.ai, and Claude.ai are a few of our favorites. They’re intelligent, intuitive, and packed with great features, revolutionizing efficiency for PR and marketing professionals worldwide.
The 10 Best Ways To Use AI in Public Relations
As AI in PR continues to evolve, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. Today’s PR superpower is to excel at using AI wisely.
Discover how you can benefit from AI for maximum PR impact in 2025 and beyond:
- Translate press releases
- Write social media posts
- Write a first draft of a press release
- Do the backlash test
- Conduct research for a release or PR campaign
- Summarize content
- Get the scoop on competitors
- Build pitch lists
- Set up a cost-effective media monitoring tool
- Generate or refine campaign concepts
Translate press releases and other material
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude.ai can translate text from one language to another in seconds, making them ideal for coordinating multi-language PR campaigns on tight deadlines.
But before you send out that post or press release, it’s worth remembering that AI isn’t infallible. To avoid embarrassing faux pas, like Asda’s “free alcohol” mishap — the result of an incorrect Welsh translation — get a human translator to check the copy for accuracy and cultural sensitivity.
Insider tip: Include your company’s tone of voice document in your prompt to ensure the AI bot’s text matches your brand style, regardless of language.
Write social media posts
GenAI is good at generating social media posts and can be particularly useful when you’re running out of topics. You can also use AI to tailor your posts to platforms, ensure consistency, and optimize your text (e.g., adding hashtags or emojis to Instagram posts).
Remember to specify tone, style, brand guidelines, and post length for the best results. Then, tweak the AI tool’s outputs for nuance and accuracy.
With any AI-generated content, you need to keep in mind that it might not be the most creative or edge piece you'll put out there. Always consider your
Insider tip: Use AI to generate initial ideas. Then, pick and refine the best posts to create topical, relevant PR posts for your intended audience.
Write a first draft of a press release
Another excellent use for AI in PR is co-writing press releases. But you’ll need to give your chosen AI ally a fair amount of guidance, with any type of content creation, but especially with press releases.
Our advice:
- Specify any vital facts to include and where to place the emphasis in the press release.
- Provide information on your target audience, core messaging, and any quotes you’d like to use.
- Consider giving your AI tool a basic structure, e.g., what to include in the intro, outro, and first few paragraphs.
Once you have a draft, you can polish the release — a much easier process than writing the copy from scratch.
Insider tip: The latest AI models are great at picking up tone and style from examples. To speed up the process, provide context with a previous press release.
Do the backlash test
Nothing erodes audience trust faster than a PR fail — ask Uber how they felt when the #deleteUber hashtag trended following Trump-related protest action in 2017.
Doing a backlash test first, saves you incredibly stressful and costly crisis management later.
A misworded press release or ill-conceived PR stunt always has the potential to create backlash. Use your AI tool to check your press release or PR campaign for alignment with expected outcomes. You can also use AI to do cultural sensitivity or inclusivity tests. We've seen incredible results with ChatGPT; simply asking it to check a press release for backlash, nuances, correctness and more.
Insider tip: For extra insight, ask AI to role-play as your intended audience. A prompt may look like this: “Read this press release as if you’re a journalist and flag any concerns.”
Conduct research for a release or PR campaign
While using AI in PR still has some limitations, the latest AI platforms can be invaluable for research tasks.
For example, while a tool like Claude.ai can’t tell you what this month’s biggest TikTok trends are (its knowledge cuts off at a certain point), it can tell you where to find them. You can also use AI to analyze your social media data, helping you to derive actionable insights for future campaigns.
For the best results, write clear prompts and use specific keywords or terms of interest, like “How can I find the latest TikTok trends?” or “What is a good mix of monthly posts for a personal LinkedIn profile?”
Insider tip: Many PR pros also use AI to find supporting data, like case studies or statistics. But beware: Data hallucinations may occur. This means the system generates plausible information that is, upon closer inspection, incorrect or fabricated. Fact-check everything.
Summarize content and meetings
One of the best uses for AI tools in PR is summarizing lengthy documents, like industry, sustainability, or financial reports. C
laude.ai can, for example, process vast amounts (up to 75MB) of text at once. This can save significant time compared to manually reviewing documents. You can ask targeted questions about the document’s content and quickly identify where to find the information you seek.
A huge time-saver for the PR.co is using ChatGPT to summarize our meetings and define next steps. We always turn on AI transcription on our zoom calls, and one of the attendees takes notes. After the meeting, we drop the transcription, together with our notes in ChatGPT, and ask it to create a brief summary and next steps which can be shared with attendees. The result is an incredibly professional summary, which keeps everyone on the same page at all times.
Insider tip: Be specific. A prompt may read: “Summarize this meeting based on the below transcription and notes. Make sure the summary is brief, includes next steps and is suitable for our sales team.”
Get the scoop on competitors
Another smart move is using AI to understand your competitors, the way they communicate and their market positioning. You could, for example:
- Ask the tool who a brand’s direct competitors are (just remember to verify the results).
- Analyze the competitor’s social media output, e.g., using downloaded posts and comments.
- Keep track of your competitor's news.
- Summarize customer review data or mine it for sentiment fails.
- Break down competitors’ press releases or marketing content to spot trends.
- Summarize PR output from multiple competitors to identify industry trends.
- Analyze competitors’ messaging across various platforms.
Insider tip: Take your competitor analysis to the next level by contrasting competitor data with your customer’s data and then asking AI for ideas on how to get ahead.
A prompt could read, “Use the competitor data to determine which important PR topics competitors aren’t already covering in their blog section.”
Build pitch lists
We've said it before and we'll say it again: expensive media databases are overrated.
AI can help with one of the most tedious tasks on your to-do list: building a pitch list. In fact, PR.co’s Guy van Koolwijk regularly uses ChatGPT to find media publications likely to publish his customers’ press releases.
“I ask the tool if it knows a particular company (my customer) and then ask it to share ideas of media publications that would want to write about the company or a specific product,” Guy says. “It then gives me a list of media publications and sometimes even journalists’ names.”
Guy notes, however, that the names generated by AI aren’t always accurate. After doing the initial search, he does more research to refine the pitch list.
Insider tip: Use AI to segment your existing pitch lists based on specific criteria, like area of interest or geographic location.
Set up a cost-effective media monitoring tool
While most of the suggestions on this list are easy to implement, this one takes a little more finessing. But believe us when we say it’s worth it.
To integrate ChatGPT into your media monitoring strategy, you’ll need to:
- Set up Google Alerts for relevant content (the brand, competitors, industry terms, etc.).
- Use a service like Zapier to forward the alerts from your email to ChatGPT (typically as a link + snippet or excerpt).
- Have ChatGPT summarize the Google Alerts snippet.
- Send the summary to you via Slack or email.
Using this workflow, you can send all the most relevant content across your desk without manually monitoring or investing in expensive tools. From here, you can dive deeper into topics of interest by reading through the content or asking ChatGPT to analyze it further: for instance to analyze for sentiment.
Insider tip: It’s also possible to automatically summarize the entire article (for which you’ve received an alert) from a link. But you’ll need some web-scraper know-how to get this process going.
Generate or refine campaign concepts
As AI in PR becomes more sophisticated, the tools will become better at helping you brainstorm ideas.
You can already bounce your existing campaign ideas off ChatGPT or Claude.ai to gauge their clarity, how engaging they are, and where you can make improvements. Adding details about current trends or competitor content will help you determine how your ideas stack up.
Insider tip: AI is great for crafting and refining key messaging. Use your favorite AI tool to work through various messaging angles to find the most impactful, on-brand approach.
How we leverage AI at PR.co
At PR.co, AI is transforming the way our customers communicate with their audiences. Our AI-powered solutions help brands such as JBL, Dolby, Domino’s, and Wise execute more efficient PR campaigns and accelerate brand growth.
Keen to experience AI-powered PR firsthand? Let’s chat.
