There's a Fine Line Between Using and Over-Relying on AI. Here's the Role Leaders Need to Play. With any new technology adoption, leaders set the tone that influences its success or failure. Learn about leadership's role when implementing AI into an organization and how to balance efficiency without becoming overreliant.
By Cara Sloman Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- Balancing the capabilities of AI with human input is essential to maintain authenticity, address biases and preserve the connection with customers.
- Leaders must foster a positive AI culture within organizations, ensuring transparent communication, managing change effectively and maintaining the human element in content creation.
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
AI is shaking things up for PR and marketing. AI-powered solutions have the potential to help with everything from automating audience segmentation to serving tailored content and delivering customized, personalized messaging to each segment. These technologies can help PR pros with automating mundane tasks or starting media lists that can later be vetted by a pro.
With any new technology adoption, leaders set the tone that influences its success or failure. Leadership drives the vision, and leaders are on point to inspire and motivate the team, create and maintain internal standards for how AI is used and manage any challenges and risks that come up. Ultimately, it's about setting your company up for success; not only in terms of AI implementation, but also for reaping its business benefits.
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Three considerations for effective AI use
AI-based tools can breathe new life into PR and marketing programs. PR professionals will benefit from the advent of new AI tech to analyze data and gain insights that impact decision-making. For marketing, it's all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. AI will transform this capability and improve the ability to tailor an approach based on the attributes of each buyer, improving customer engagement and conversion rates.
When considering AI-powered tools, people often focus on training staff to use the tools, but there's much more to it. Here are three main considerations that will help you use AI effectively:
Recognize both the possible advantages and risks of AI and how it can help achieve business goals.
Get support from stakeholders by effectively communicating your intentions. This will ensure that everyone is on the same page. To keep current with the latest innovations and trends, interact with other organizations, like technology vendors and research institutions.
Think about the ethics of AI use.
Artificial intelligence is not perfect, so issues of transparency, bias and data privacy exist. Vet all solutions to make sure they were responsibly developed to minimize such issues and that there are safeguards and controls in effect.
Recognize that when you implement an AI solution or initiate an AI project, you are creating organizational change.
As a leader, you'll need to continually interact with stakeholders about how the project is progressing. You'll also need to provide support and training for all staff involved in the initiative, which includes teams that could resist this change.
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Balancing automation and human-centric elements
When adding AI to PR and marketing programs, there are several possible challenges and risks to address. One challenge is staff resistance due to the idea that AI might replace their jobs. This is an understandable concern for reporters, PR writers and other content creators. A risk is that although ChatGPT has been acclaimed for its content production abilities, it's still prone to hallucination and needs fact-checking.
Another risk is depending on AI without respect for human experience and wisdom, especially for making decisions that must take ethics and nuanced reasoning into account. Again, AI isn't perfect; there still needs to be at least one human in the loop. This will help ensure unbiased, accurate data for use in AI as humans check for biases, proper representation and issues with data quality.
To maintain the human touch, balance AI algorithms' speed and output with the human qualities of lived experience and intuition. Include human creativity alongside AI automation to preserve your brand's voice and maintain that all-important human connection with your customers. When you rely on real-world experience to solve your customers' pain points, that creates a competitive advantage over companies that rely on all-purpose, nonspecific AI content.
Fostering a positive AI culture
Leadership plays a vital role in cultivating a culture that embraces AI. Transparent communication is a necessary aspect of this role. Communicate the potential benefits of AI openly and honestly with your team. Communication also involves addressing concerns related to the use of AI. Acknowledge concerns and engage in constructive conversations about AI's limitations and foster an atmosphere of continuous learning and dialogue.
You'll also need to embrace an iterative approach to AI integration, allowing room for experimentation, learning and refinement. This will help your organization harness the power of AI to meet business goals and find new opportunities. This "rinse and repeat" model will help your company to see what's working, double down on what is and use AI to its full benefit.
Leading the way to proper AI use
Like it or not — and there's a lot to like — AI is transforming how we work. From automating mundane tasks to unearthing new opportunities, this technology holds great promise. Yes, there are caveats, and it's your job as a leader to help your organization's PR and marketing functions responsibly navigate this new terrain while gaining maximum benefit. That includes increasing operational efficiency and using automation at the tactical level. Be sure to allay fears that AI will steal your staff's jobs; encourage them that the human element will always be necessary for content creation. Strong leadership will play a key role in successful AI implementations that reap the benefits yet maintain the human touch.
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