Each week we’ll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know!
Note: We’ll be off for the next two weeks and start back up again on Jan. 7. Have a great holiday season and best wishes for a prosperous and healthy 2025!
What You Should Know
How will AI Change Communications in 2025?
Artificial intelligence already dominates the conversation about how we all work (regardless of our job titles). It’s gone from a shiny new toy to table stakes for communications professionals. What’s next in 2025?
For starters, you may not have to prompt as much next year. According to Google Cloud, AI agents are on the verge of a breakout year because “they can seamlessly manage complex workflows, automate business processes, and support human employees.” A Capgemini survey shows that 52% of organizations plan to use agentic AI in 2025, and another 30% plan to by 2027. Of course, you’ll want to keep humans “in the loop,” so agents don’t miss the mark, but AI agents have the potential to deliver big efficiency gains.
In public relations, prepare for an AI takeover. According to Prowly’s PR Trends 2025, 74% of PR pros say “AI-powered PR” is the top trend for 2025 — no other trend came even half as close in the survey. There are already plenty of AI tools that support research, content creation, data analysis, and media monitoring. More are surely on the horizon in 2025, but if you’re not already using them, you’re about to get lapped.
Speed and efficiency are two of AI’s biggest draws, but using the tech just to be faster won’t be enough. Communications pros will need to get creative and think outside the box to stand out in 2025. Maybe your new medium for messaging is AI-generated short-form video or an interactive podcast (more on that below). One comms strategist even predicts that AI will kill the press release.
In 2025, AI won’t replace communicators — but it will redefine how we work. Leveraging AI tools to deliver smarter insights, more personalized pitches, and engaging content will be a prerequisite for success. For those willing to adapt, the opportunities are endless.
Elsewhere …
- PODCAST: How AI Helps Marketers Focus on Strategy and Creativity
- Google’s Whisk AI Generator will ‘Remix’ the Pictures you Plug in
- Meta Rolls Out Live AI, Translations, and Shazam to its Smart Glasses
- Mayorkas Unveils New Chatbot for Homeland Security Staff
- How to Chat with Santa in ChatGPT
- You Can Now Talk with Google’s NotebookLM AI Podcast Hosts
Tips and Tricks
Organize with Projects
What’s happening: The 12 Days of OpenAI have produced a couple of actual new features (as opposed to pre-announced capabilities like Sora or advanced voice mode with video), including Friday’s launch of Projects. This new capability can help organize your chats like a simple file folder setup, but Projects also lets you upload files or set custom instructions for new chats in that folder to reference.
How it works: Projects appear on the left rail of ChatGPT. If you haven’t created one before, you could easily think you’re simply starting a new chat because the plus symbol draws you in. After you name your project, you’ll be able to add files (akin to a knowledge base for a GPT) and a set of instructions. Any chats will be listed under the project name in the left rail, and won’t appear on the normal list of chats further down the left rail. You can also drag and drop chats in and out of a Projects folder
Try this: Think about how you might categorize your work and what custom instructions or documents would be helpful for each Projects folder. You might have one for each client with examples of their voice or a folder just for social media posts or press releases. If you upload documents, be sure to include in the instructions how those documents should be used and when they should be referenced. For example, you wouldn’t Projects to include the content of an example press release, since the topic may not be irrelevant. Instead, you’d want to include in your instructions to follow the style of the example release, use the same boilerplate and dateline, and maintain the tone of the quote.
Quote of the Week
“In 2025 and beyond, AI will change everything we know about this business, from audience behaviors to business models. If you are a journalist or a journalism student, you should play with it, a lot, while it’s still open and cheap.
“Prompt Claude, build a custom GPT, fine-tune an LLM, make a podcast from your meeting notes, make a cute picture of a fairy and turn it into a video. Do like Nikita Roy from the Newsroom Robots podcast and talk to the ChatGPT voice app. Do it every morning until it knows you so well, it becomes your brainstorming partner. The more you understand the tools, the more you understand what’s possible.
“This will not last forever. AI companies will change their terms of service, increase their rates or even go out of business. Now is the time to tinker.”
— Marie Gilot, Executive Director of J+, the professional training arm of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, in a Nieman Lab blog post on AI predictions for 2025
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