AI in Corporate Comms: Opportunities and Pitfalls

by Katharina Auer:

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the landscape of corporate communications, offering both exciting opportunities and potential pitfalls, particularly with GenAI.

What is AI? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems, to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. Generative AI (GenAI) is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses models to generate content, such as text, images, or videos, based on patterns learned from existing data.

The availability of AI does not change the fundamental tenets of effective strategic communications: focus on business needs and measurable outcomes. By understanding how to effectively harness AI while mitigating its risks, we can continuously improve communication strategies and execution by focusing on data driven insights and plans. This in turn has the potential to make communications and communicators more strategic, moving away from the still frequently prevalent activity driven thinking.

So how can we use AI in corporate communications?

Communications planning: we can teach Gen AI platforms how to create strategic and outcomes focused communications plans, particularly where companies have their own Gen AI platforms. This means ‘teaching’ the platform about strategic communications processes (business need & goals; communication goals; building key messages; tool & channel selection; measurement). Using generic Gen AI platforms, we can correct anything the tool delivers and feed this back into the platform as it learns.

Data analysis: AI can analyze data from various sources, such as social media, website traffic, and customer feedback, to provide insights into audience behavior and communication effectiveness. This can help communicators refine their strategies and audience targeting. While we may not be there yet, take intranets or websites as an example: imagine we could target content based on audience usage and navigation/viewing behavior – just as shopping channels make recommendations based on our buying behavior or music streaming platforms create playlists based on our listening choices. Data analysis will also allow us to analyse our activities’ effectiveness and so stop non-value adding work or non-value adding content, recommending next best actions.

Content creation: with the right prompts, Gen AI-powered tools can generate high-quality content, such as blog posts, social media updates, media releases, articles. While the content generated may not be 100% usable, it can help generate ideas or deliver a first draft for editing. Gen AI tools can also help us improve content we have drafted, again with the right prompts – for example checking if it is right for a specific audience. Providing feedback on the GenAI generated content also helps the tool to learn and improve.

Content curation: AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify relevant and compelling content from various sources. This can help communicators stay informed about industry trends and curate content that resonates with their target audience. However, it is important to respect existing copyright and not to feed company confidential or sensitive information and data to an open AI tool.

Social media management: AI-powered social media management tools can automate tasks such as scheduling posts, analyzing audience engagement, and identifying trending topics. This can free up communicators’ time to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Customer/stakeholder communications: AI-powered chatbots can provide instant support to customers, answer frequently asked questions, and resolve common issues. This can improve customer satisfaction and free up human agents to manage more complex inquiries.

Benefits of using AI/Gen AI in corporate communications

Data-driven decisions: AI can analyze data from many sources to provide valuable insights into audience behavior and communication effectiveness, enabling communicators to make more informed decisions, to target content and campaigns, and to continue client/stakeholder education on strategic communications.

Efficiency improvements: AI can automate routine and time-consuming tasks, such as content creation and social media management, freeing up communicators to focus on more strategic initiatives and eliminate non-value adding activities.

Quality improvement: AI-powered tools can help communicators create higher-quality content by providing suggestions for improvement, identifying errors, and ensuring consistency in tone and style.

Cost savings: by automating tasks and improving efficiency, AI can reduce costs and help improve return on communication investment.

Audience/customer satisfaction: better and more relevant content and information.

Employee engagement (commitment): more relevant & targeted content and communications to improve line of sight.

Pitfalls to avoid

Any AI tool is only as good as its algorithms and data ingestion, which mostly depend on human input. Low quality data going in will lead to poor quality coming out.

Lack of human touch and creativity: AI-generated content can sometimes lack the human touch and emotional connection that resonates with audiences. It is important to use AI as a tool to augment human creativity, not replace it.

Data privacy, ethics & integrity: AI relies on large amounts of data, which can raise concerns about data privacy and security. It is important to ensure that any data used by AI is managed responsibly and ethically and in line with data privacy legislation and regulation. This means never providing individual or personal information in any AI tool.

Bias and fairness: AI algorithms are trained on data that may contain human biases, which can lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes. It is important to be aware of these biases and take steps to mitigate them before implementing the algorithm or large data model.

Over-reliance on AI: over-reliance on AI can lead to a lack of critical thinking and creativity. It is important to maintain a balance between human judgment and AI-powered tools. Remember, organizations are people and rely on people, so need to continue to be people centric.

Chatbots going rogue: it is important to constantly monitor AI tools to check what they are ‘learning,’ what data is going in, and to eliminate biases or misinformation. There are well known cases of chatbots going rogue due to sabotage, bad programming, or lack of monitoring, at worst providing dangerous advice and information, as well as using bad, racist, and misogynistic language.

Conclusion

By understanding how AI and Generative AI work, we can harness it while avoiding mishaps. AI tools can help us continuously improve our communication strategies, help us to focus on data driven insights, improve the internal and external customer experience, and achieve better outcomes and ROI. However, it is important to remember that AI is a tool, a tool to augment human creativity and judgment, not replace. By striking the right balance between human and machine intelligence, we can unlock the potential of AI in corporate communications for better audience and business outcomes.

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Katharina Auer is VP/Global Head of Internal, Service, HSE, Suppliers & Partners, SD Communications, Communications Business Solutions at Hitachi Energy. She is a recognized corporate communications & change leader and strategist with focus on measurable outcomes. She has worked for companies such as GE, AstraZeneca, Shell, Rio Tinto, Zurich Insurance, ABB and gained multi-cultural experience  in the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and South Africa. She has also served as a non-executive board member and co-chaired  the Conference Board’s European Corporate Communications Council.

Written by: Editor