Debunking 5 Common PR Misconceptions in the AI Age

Key Points: 

• AI enhances but does not replace PR professionals, as human skills like empathy, strategic thinking and relationship-building remain essential.
• Integrated communications strategies already support AI optimization, enabling PR teams to strengthen visibility by refining existing content for AI systems.
• Success requires balancing AI-driven performance metrics with qualitative measures that reflect trust, credibility and the human impact of communications.

Shrinking newsrooms, the growing emphasis on large language models (LLMs), shifting search behavior and the sheer speed at which innovation travels is a lot for any communicator to take in. For public relations pros, the new landscape may spark moments of self-doubt and confusion around which AI insights are truly valuable.  

AI presents both challenges and opportunities to PR pros, along with plenty of misinformation. It’s never been more important to practice discernment, stay focused and maintain perspective. The right balance of AI insight and human heart can make you future-proof and help your clients and/or organizations achieve lasting relevance…and it starts by weeding out the fiction from the facts. 

In the age of information overload, we’re debunking five misconceptions about PR and AI. 

Reality: AI can assist with tasks like drafting press releases and finding media contacts, but PR is rooted in relationships and emotional intelligence. Ultimately, those human traits build authentic connections with journalists and stakeholders – not AI.  

Human elements of empathy, strategic thinking and relationship building not only remain irreplaceable but can produce results that actively teach LLMs about your brand, credibility and relevance – and ultimately translate into visibility. 

Muck Rack research reveals 95% of AI-cited links come from non-paid sources, 27% of which are from journalistic outlets. This represents an exciting new dawn for PR. AI’s knowledge base depends on credible, third-party content that skilled PR pros generate through media relations and strategic storytelling. 

Reality: AI can support monitoring and early alerts, but an effective crisis response demands uniquely human qualities: empathy, timely judgment, cultural context and reading between the lines of rapidly evolving situations. 

AI complements crisis management by processing data quickly and identifying emerging issues, but nuanced decision-making – understanding stakeholder emotions, predicting secondary effects and crafting authentic messages – remains human territory. 

Use AI for monitoring, analysis and initial drafting, but rely on human expertise for strategy, stakeholder management and critical judgment calls in crisis responses. Having a plan is essential, but human instinct often proves more valuable than predetermined playbooks when facing unexpected challenges. 

AI also isn’t perfect. It can hallucinate, pull things out of context and incorrectly source information. 

Reality: If your work incorporates The PESO Model© and integrated communications (hopefully it does!) you’re already halfway there. Journalists conducting research or stakeholders searching for a right-fit agency partner before their next RFP are turning to AI to streamline these processes. For proponents of integrated communications, the content ecosystem your team has built directly feeds AI training models and search results. 

• Owned media: LLMs favor context, prompts and recency. Regularly filling your website with valuable, credible content that answers questions directly trains the model AND fuels earned media efforts.   

• Pro tip: OpenAI models favor content published in the last 12 months. You’re likely not appearing in results if you’re still relying on older content.  

• Earned media: With owned media as your foundation, earned media further forms AI’s knowledge backbone with credible, citable sources. For example, a bylined article can position your execs as subject matter experts while training the model. 

• Shared media: Content you publish to social media helps feed the model because it now appears in search results. For example, Instagram now produces AI-referenced search results. However, keep in mind that feeding the model is different than training the model. Learn more about the difference here.   

• Paid media: While paid content rarely appears in AI citations, it’s still a strong visibility driver and an important component of integrated comms.  

A new landscape does not make your skillset obsolete. There’s no need to start from scratch when you optimize existing strategies for both human audiences and AI systems. In fact, you’re now able to go beyond winning placements and actively build the infrastructure in which your brand appears. 

Reality: Traditional SEO provides a foundation, but AI visibility requires different strategies. Clarity, structure, answering questions directly and schema markup help AI systems understand your content. 

AI systems prioritize authoritative, well-structured content that directly addresses user queries (so unfortunately, being optimized for search isn’t enough anymore). This means shifting from keyword optimizing to comprehensive topic coverage and from building backlinks to building authentic expertise. 

Traditional content marketing principles align with AI optimization – the difference lies in execution. Once again, this is excellent news for those already implementing The PESO Model! This means you don’t need to reinvent the wheel – you just need to redirect it in a machine-friendly way.  

As a PR pro, you already make a point to get your brand or clients linked, cited and contextualized – and AI will reward those efforts if they’re clearly structured and accurate and respond to frequently asked questions. 

Reality: AI has changed human behavior but it’s only a fraction of what influences that behavior. The marketing funnel we used to know no longer exists, and measuring success isn’t as simple as it once was (it hasn’t been for a long time).  

When assessing traffic and other AI-driven KPIs, it’s important to account for the broader context of how people consume and interact with information. Traditional metrics may not capture AI-optimized strategies’ full impact, and over-relying on algorithmic performance data misses crucial human elements. 

PRGN said it best in a recent blog post on brand influence – clicks and reach have their place, but they can’t tell you whether people believe you, trust you or want to associate with your brand. 

Although AI measurement has a long way to go, you can develop frameworks balancing quantitative AI performance with qualitative indicators of engagement, brand perception and relationship building. Success requires measuring both direct AI performance (citation frequency and search visibility) and indirect benefits (improved content quality, enhanced insights and efficient workflows). 

The most valuable metrics demonstrate how AI implementation supports broader communications goals – something incredibly valuable when clicks are increasingly more difficult to achieve.  

The AI revolution isn’t about replacement – it’s transformation. Success belongs to those who understand AI’s capabilities and limitations, leverage it as a tool and continue to prioritize and develop uniquely human skills no algorithm can replicate. 

By dispelling these misconceptions, we can approach AI with the right balance of enthusiasm and pragmatism. The future is shaping up to favor PR professionals who embrace AI while remaining deeply, authentically human in building relationships, telling stories and driving meaningful change. 

The magic of AI isn’t really magic – and that’s exactly why it represents such an exciting opportunity for those prepared to understand and harness its potential. 

Kaiti Harworth is an Integrated Communications Supervisor – Digital at Franco. Connect with her on LinkedIn.