Julie Talenfeld
President of BoardroomPR
1776 N. Pine Island Road, Suite 320
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33322
954.370.8999
[email protected]
BoardroomPR.com
Yes, this is another thought piece about AI!
AI is just so powerful, so revolutionary, and so transformative, so potentially helpful and wonderful and yet so potentially disturbing and dystopian, that I just can’t stop thinking about and talking about it. And I have some more thoughts I’d like to share.
Here is where I stand. I genuinely feel that AI is here to help us with the menial tasks, with planning our vacations, with decluttering our computers and our minds, with helping us cook dinner from whatever happens to be in our fridge in the style of Ina Garten. But in my heart of hearts, I believe that AI is not here to replace each of our unique voices—editorially and literally.
In my industry of public relations, storytelling is everything. AI can be an incredible assistant for first drafts or outlines, a dutiful thought partner for a brainstorming session, or just an accountability agent to help you get things out the door. I don’t see this as a substitute for creativity, but instead, as an engine.
Here’s where things get risky: sameness. Blah, boring, little boxes on the hillside writing. If everyone is using the same AI tools and deploying them for the same use cases, the media landscape starts to feel like one monotonous, beigey (the technical term) space.
To be clear: Human insight and writing still wins every time. Every. Single. Time!
Don’t let AI trick you into thinking it’s “smarter” or “better” than you, because by just being you, in and of itself, you have something unique and worthwhile to contribute. Your lived experience, your point of view, your understanding of your audience, your sense of humor, your YOU-ness: that’s the secret sauce no algorithm can replicate. What a shame if we lost it. If we lost YOU!
The most successful publicists, brands, and people in general will be those that treat AI like a smart, capable intern—not a final decision-maker with full editorial control. Let it do the initial research, sure, but never ever ever give it the last word.
So please, don’t fear AI. Learn it. Play with it. Experiment. Use it to make your processes more efficient and your ideas more expansive in and out the office. Just promise me that you won’t ever outsource your voice. Not because it’s cheating or morally unsound, because you will be left with a lesser product that has less of YOU in it.
