AI Can Optimise PR — But It Will Never Replace the Human Touch at Its Core

In many cases, AI adoption has become as much about optics as outcomes. PR agencies are scrambling to launch AI agents, proprietary tools and new service products in an effort to stay ahead of the curve and reassure clients they are modern, relevant, and future-proof.

Sure, it’s understandable. AI is all the rage these days. But it’s also where caution is needed.

Where AI Genuinely Excels in PR

Used well, AI is an outstanding operational ally in the public relations profession.

It can analyse how coverage correlates with web traffic, measure changes in search visibility, track brand mentions at scale, and surface patterns that would take humans days to identify. Machine learning is particularly effective at spotting trends across large data sets and helping teams understand what happened after a campaign launched.

These capabilities make PR more accountable and more measurable. They improve reporting and help practitioners demonstrate impact in ways that leadership teams increasingly expect.

But analysis is not insight. And dashboards are not strategy.

The Risk of Mistaking Tools for Transformation

The danger isn’t AI itself — it’s the assumption that adding more technology automatically makes PR better.

As agencies rush to productise AI, there’s a real risk of losing sight of what makes PR effective in the first place. Fancy interfaces and automated outputs may look impressive, but they don’t replace judgement, timing or emotional intelligence.

PR has never been about volume or velocity alone. It’s about relevance, credibility, and resonance - qualities that don’t show up neatly on a dashboard.

PR Is Still a Human Discipline

The heart of PR, particularly media relations, is emotional intelligence.

Understanding the zeitgeist. Reading the room. Knowing when a story will feel timely and when it will feel forced. Most importantly, understanding journalists as people - their interests, their pressures, their areas of expertise, and their tolerance for noise.

Yes, AI can highlight trends and patterns of behaviour, but it cannot assess nuance. It can process sentiment, but it cannot feel it. This will always be AI’s blindspot that PR professionals must still consider even as they build AI into their service offerings and how they deploy and measure PR camapigns.

Relationships Remain the Real Advantage

Strong PR outcomes are built on trust and long-term relationships. Those relationships are earned through consistency, credibility, and mutual respect - not automation. AI can support research and preparation, but it cannot replace the human connections that sit at the core of effective communications.

Machine learning will continue to speed up the analytical side of PR, and that’s a good thing. But PR will never become an exact science - because people aren’t predictable, and neither is culture or social trends.

AI should absolutely help PR work smarter. However, it just shouldn’t replace the relationships and emotional intelligence that make the discipline work in the first place.

PR doesn’t need to become more artificial. It needs to stay more human.