Public Relations (PR) in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Friends, Thank you very much for taking out time from your very busy schedule to read my blog(s). Sharing PR knowledge with you with finesse has become my passion now and I really feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comments column. Today I’m happy to present my 79th blog “Public Relations in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”.

 “To be truly diverse you need to bring people into Artificial Intelligence that thinks differently.” - Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of AI & Machine Learning & Member of the Executive Committee - World Economic Forum.

The past decade has been immensely exciting for India’s tech journey, as the adoption of Artificial Intelligence began witnessing an upward trend. While India’s efforts to strategies and implement initiatives that can truly help the common man reap benefits of Artificial Intelligence, now is not the time to rest on the laurels but instead, push the boundaries even further. - Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM.

Year 2017…My first encounter with Artificial Intelligence…was standing in the car parking at Google HQ in Mountain View, California…saw a car…nobody on driving seat…slowly moving towards car parking space…stopped at marked space for car parking…car’s doors automatically opened…one passenger got down from the car…doors automatically closed…the passenger carrying a brief case went away… First Driverless Car from the house of Google – “WAYMO” using Artificial Intelligence.

Friends, whether you have realized it or not, artificial intelligence is all around us and playing an active role in our daily lives. We use Artificial Intelligence every day, even if we do not notice it. Every time we open our Facebook newsfeed, do a Google search, or get a product recommendation from Amazon, Artificial Intelligence is lurking in the background.

Coined in 1956 by a group of computer scientists gathered at a conference at Dartmouth College, US Artificial Intelligence was defined by Simon A. Herbert as a branch of computer science that studies the phenomena that occur when computers perform tasks that, if performed by humans, would be regarded as requiring intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Artificial Intelligence’s ability to process human language has allowed the organisations to understand individual behaviors, preferences, beliefs and interests to deliver more efficient communication strategies.

Artificial intelligence permits machines to perform certain tasks while analyzing data. Artificial Intelligence impacts almost everything we see in the world today. Smart phones, video games, and social media feeds are just a few of the ample ways Artificial Intelligence modifies programming to make our lives easier.

Artificial Intelligence enables machines in order to perform cognitive tasks such as seeing, writing, moving, reading, or analysing data as well or better than humans. Few examples how Artificial Intelligence impacts my daily life:

• My Iphone11pro voice assistant SIRI uses Artificial Intelligence technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG) to answer my queries and dial numbers.
• Alexa plays my favorite song in just one command.
• My Gmail uses Artificial Intelligence to predict what I will type next and complete sentences for me.
• Amazon relies on Artificial Intelligence to recommend products for me based on what I’ve bought in last week or month(s).

Some more examples of Artificial Intelligence are shared hereunder…….

·         Automated financial investing

·         Conversational marketing bot

·         Disease mapping

·         Inter-team chat tool

·         Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools e.g.

Ø  Digital phone calls

Ø  Data analysis

Ø  Email filters

Ø  Language translation

Ø  Predictive text

Ø  Smart assistants

Ø  Search results

Ø  Text analytics

·         Proactive healthcare management

·         Robots

·         Self-driving cars

·         Smart assistants

·         Social media monitoring

·         Virtual travel booking

Artificial intelligence has successfully set its milestones in all the major areas such as banking & finance, bio-technology, e-commerce, education, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, transportation, security, etc.  At its core, Artificial Intelligence is focused on making intelligent machines capable of solving problems as well as or better than humans can.

Artificial Intelligence systems are developed to perform tasks like Decision-making, Language translation, Speech recognition and Visual perception.  However, it’s not just one type of technology. In fact, it’s a combination of Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, and Machine Learning. Let’s understand these terms in brief.

Ø  Computer Vision is a technology that allows computers to identify patterns and recognise objects in images. It is used by some advert tracking companies to detect the logos of thousands of brands and businesses in newspapers and magazines. This technology allows the computer to understand what they ‘see’, and is being used in self-driving cars, augmented reality as well as the development of robots.

Ø  Natural Language Processing is a component of machine learning that processes, sorts and categorizes various elements of text. While a human can inherently understand the meaning of sentences and paragraphs, a computer cannot really understand language. Using the mechanics of language, computers can, however, identify the context and grammatical use of words in sentences.

Ø  Neural Networks are a method of processing vast amounts of data, which is modeled on the way the human brain interprets information. Neural networks consist of layers of nodes that receive data, extract the most relevant information and send the data along to the next node.

Ø  Machine Learning is a process where machines are fed data, and continually develop the algorithms they have been programmed with. The more data the machines are fed, the more accurately it can process similar information in the future, and the more sophisticated the algorithms will become.

Artificial Intelligence programming focuses on three cognitive skills: Learning, Reasoning and Self-correction.

Learning processes: This aspect of Artificial Intelligence programming focuses on acquiring data and creating rules for how to turn the data into actionable information. The rules, which are called algorithms, provide computing devices with step-by-step instructions for how to complete a specific task.

Reasoning processes: This aspect of Artificial Intelligence programming focuses on choosing the right algorithm to reach a desired outcome.

Self-correction processes: This aspect of Artificial Intelligence programming is designed to continually fine-tune algorithms and ensure they provide the most accurate results possible.

PR in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Friends, Public Relations is an art and very much relies on the human touch for face-to-face client interactions and social networking. It assesses public attitudes, and maintains mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its publics. To improve channels of communication and institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow of information and understanding, PR uses tools like Corporate Affairs, Corporate PR, Community Relations, Consumer Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility, Employees Relations, Events, Financial (Stakeholder) Relations, Government Relations, Media Relations and Sponsorships etc.. For this PR requires a unique combination of human intuition, reasoning, empathy, emotion and above all the following skills to be a good PR professional;

ü  Communication Skills, 

ü  Content Analytics,

ü  Creativity, 

ü  Interpersonal (People) Skills,

ü  IT Skills,

ü  Marketing Skills,

ü  Planning Skills, 

ü  Presentation Skills, 

ü  Research Skills,

ü  Writing Skills.

Friends, PR is essential for every social or business communication. In today’s extremely competitive scenario, each and every business looks for transformation and upgrading to keep their existing consumers not only satisfied but loyal too, and this is no different for our very own PR sector also. With the interventions from artificial intelligence the face of PR has started changing now. Today, PR equipped with Artificial Intelligence is managing media relations, strengthening community relations, promoting brand value, managing reputation, and overall enhancing the online presence of the client. Although Artificial Intelligence is a new and innovative technology, but it will certainly add value to the practice of PR. This new relationship between humans and intelligent machines is enabling PR to create data-driven campaigns, automate repetition-based tasks, analyze online conversations, predict a crisis and even produce personalized content.

Public relations can be hugely benefitted from Artificial Intelligence. By using artificial intelligence we can search through all of the information available across any digital platform at lightning speed.  With its automated process of scanning information, artificial intelligence will be able to determine the best time of day for press releases, social media posts and other avenues of engagement with their target audience, based on when people are interacting with the information and what platform or means of communication receives the most interaction. The benefits of Artificial Intelligence in PR are huge, with new applications are being discovered as the technology continues to advance and evolve. Friends, the future is all about technology, let’s use it wisely. 

To conclude;

The place of Public Relations (PR) in today’s life is of utmost importance. It is required for social and business communication and to build a mutual relationship between an individual or an organization and its public. However, the face of PR has changed with the interventions from artificial intelligence. PROS equipped with Artificial Intelligence are managing the reputation, strengthening the community relations, promoting brand values, and overall enhancing the online presence of their client(s). Friends, any technology should be judiciously dealt with for the larger interest of the society. Therefore, continual research on effective use of Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations and its related fields is a requisite.  

Undoubtedly, Artificial Intelligence is becoming a key technology in many sectors. It has advanced and is fine-tuning itself with each passing day. Artificial Intelligence systems are as good as the data fed to them, or they work just how the creator of those systems intends them to. That is the reason diversity, inclusion; transparency, fairness, and explainability have come to the forefront. Diversity in Artificial Intelligence is of great importance as we need these systems to perform bias-free and give non-skewed results.

Friends, a NASSCOM-McKinsey report stated that Artificial Intelligence can contribute nearly $500bn to the Indian economy by 2025. Looking on to its usefulness, I’ve  no doubts that Artificial Intelligence will be a great leveller and enabler in time to come but the significance of human intelligence, creativity, cognitive skills, interpersonal skills and knowledge will be there in Public Relations forever.

 

Thanks for reading the blog.