Since the launch of Ope­nAI’s Chat­G­PT large lan­guage mod­el in No­vem­ber last year, there has been tremen­dous buzz about the po­ten­tial rev­o­lu­tion­ary im­pact of gen­er­a­tive Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence on the mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions land­scape.

Glob­al­ly, mar­ket­ing and PR ex­perts, cor­po­rate ex­ec­u­tives as well as aca­d­e­mics in com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­search are look­ing close­ly at the tec­ton­ic shifts in the in­dus­try caused by the suite of new gen­er­a­tive tools, and try­ing to make pre­dic­tions about what it means to the in­dus­try and to ca­reers.

AI is not new in the in­dus­try. For some time now, AI tools have been used to help mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als analyse large amounts of da­ta such as so­cial me­dia trends. Mar­keters are us­ing AI to analyse con­sumer be­hav­iour and mar­ket in­sights—point­ing out pat­terns, pref­er­ences and sen­ti­ments so they can de­liv­er tai­lored con­tent, prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions, and tar­get­ed ad­ver­tise­ments to in­di­vid­ual con­sumers, en­hanc­ing en­gage­ment and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.

In­ter­act­ing with chat­bots and vir­tu­al as­sis­tants has be­come com­mon­place in cus­tomer ser­vice as they au­to­mate in­ter­ac­tions, pro­vide in­stant re­spons­es, and han­dle rou­tine in­quiries.

Now, the game is chang­ing. AI tools such as Chat­G­PT, Google’s Bard and Jasper AI are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing con­tent cre­ation by gen­er­at­ing high-qual­i­ty writ­ten and vi­su­al con­tent. Nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing (NLP) al­go­rithms can pro­duce en­gag­ing ar­ti­cles, blog posts, and so­cial me­dia up­dates, while AI-pow­ered im­age and video analy­sis tools fa­cil­i­tate con­tent cu­ra­tion and op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

What does all of this mean for me­dia ad­vis­ers, jour­nal­ists, ed­i­tors and con­tent cre­ators, mar­ket­ing of­fi­cers and brand man­agers? Will hu­mans be re­placed with ro­bots?

These are among the ques­tions to be ex­plored when Caribbean me­dia in­tel­li­gence com­pa­ny, Me­dia In­Site Ltd, hosts its up­com­ing sem­i­nar: Friend or Foe: The role of AI in mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, on June 27, 2023. Me­dia In­Site has put to­geth­er an in­formed pan­el of pro­fes­sion­als in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, jour­nal­ism, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and pub­lic re­la­tions. They will ex­am­ine how gen­er­a­tive AI is chang­ing the way com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als do their jobs.

“When you look at how the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor is evolv­ing glob­al­ly, you ap­pre­ci­ate how im­por­tant the con­ver­sa­tion is for us. COVID-19 was a dis­rup­tor to our in­dus­try—test­ing com­pa­nies and prac­ti­tion­ers in PR, cri­sis, em­ploy­ee com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and di­ver­si­ty. Now Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence is aim­ing to fur­ther rev­o­lu­tionise how our in­dus­try will op­er­ate,” ex­plained Al­li­son De­mas, CEO of Me­dia In­Site Ltd.

“We tend to think these is­sues are glob­al, that they don’t re­al­ly af­fect us in Trinidad and To­ba­go, or in the Caribbean. Our com­pa­ny is us­ing AI in our me­dia mon­i­tor­ing op­er­a­tions, and we are see­ing AI tools be­ing more wide­ly used in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors. Giv­en the de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of tech­nol­o­gy we have to be pre­pared.”

But is it in fact a ques­tion of “Search and Re­place” when it comes to the hu­man fac­tor and AI?

In 2018, a study by the Char­tered In­sti­tute for Pub­lic Re­la­tions (CIPR), en­ti­tled, “Hu­mans still need­ed: An analy­sis of skills and tools in pub­lic re­la­tions” took a clos­er look at how AI and tech­nol­o­gy would im­pact jobs in pub­lic re­la­tions. The au­thors con­clud­ed that while PR will ben­e­fit from AI tools, they did not an­tic­i­pate re­place­ment.

“AI can be in­cred­i­bly use­ful, but if it is used with­out com­ple­ment­ing hu­man aware­ness, it can be detri­men­tal. We need hu­mans to think cre­ative­ly and ab­stract­ly about prob­lems to de­vise new and in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies, test out dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es and look to the fu­ture. Parts of what we do – or in some cas­es en­tire tasks – are or will be au­to­mat­ed and will ben­e­fit from AI,” the study not­ed.

“Re­gard­less of the tasks and skills that can be au­to­mat­ed or ben­e­fit from AI, hu­man in­ter­ven­tion in edit­ing, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence, ap­ply­ing good judge­ment and ethics will al­ways be need­ed,” it con­clud­ed.

The “Hu­mans still need­ed” re­port al­so stressed “the need to be vig­i­lant in the eth­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of us­ing da­ta,” pre­dict­ing that ethics would be the “dom­i­nant dif­fer­en­tia­tor” in pub­lic re­la­tions prac­tice.

The sem­i­nar will in­clude a pan­el dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by Khamal Georges, for­mer news­cast­er. The pan­el will in­clude Joe Tay­lor, vice pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions, Me­dia In­Site Ltd, LaShaun Ramdin, CEO of Ramdin Con­sul­tan­cy and jour­nal­ist Mark Lyn­der­say.