AI use in the PR industry has grown exponentially. The number of PR professionals leveraging AI has surged nearly 40% since March 2023, according to the latest survey from Muck Rack, the Public Relations Management (PRM) platform that enables organizations to build trust, tell their stories and demonstrate the unique value of earned media.

“2023 was the year of experimentation with this new technology and it appears most communications and PR professionals have embraced it. Adoption of generative AI was still relatively low earlier in the year, but a third said at the time that they were planning to explore it”

AI has had a positive impact on work quality and efficiency for those PR professionals who use it, with 74% reporting an increase in the quality of their work and 89% completing projects more rapidly. Those who reported using AI leverage it for a variety of writing tasks: social copy (64%), research (58%), writing press releases (58%) and crafting pitches (54%).

A noticeable discrepancy exists between brands and agencies in how they disclose AI use. While 21% of agency PR professionals admit never disclosing their AI utilization to clients, only 6% of brand professionals support this non-disclosure strategy. To help address questions surrounding ethics and disclosure, Muck Rack published its own AI Standards guide for PR and journalism professionals.

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Despite the widespread use of AI, concerns remain largely unchanged. While 95% of PR professionals claim to edit their AI outputs, over half still consider unscrutinized AI output a potential risk. Furthermore, 67% express concern that new PR professionals entering the field might overly rely on tools and not learn the basics of the profession.

“2023 was the year of experimentation with this new technology and it appears most communications and PR professionals have embraced it. Adoption of generative AI was still relatively low earlier in the year, but a third said at the time that they were planning to explore it,” said Gregory Galant, cofounder and CEO of Muck Rack. “They held true to that commitment with nearly two-thirds now saying they use it in their workflows. Plus the number of people who were either not sure they wanted to use AI or had no plans of using it, both decreased substantially, showing that generative AI is likely to have a permanent place in the communicator’s toolbox.”

While the number of people who do not plan to explore AI tools decreased from 15% to 5%, the small cohort in opposition of the technology have varying concerns, including that the output is too unpredictable and that it won’t help them do their job. Responses to the “other” category cover many reasons, including ethical and security concerns.

Muck Rack’s State of AI in PR January 2024 report serves as an update and expansion of Muck Rack’s State of AI in PR 2023 survey, administered in March 2023. The goal is to provide insights into the PR industry to help improve the workflow of public relations professionals, particularly in the rapidly expanding field of generative artificial intelligence.

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