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| Max Spielman |
Public relations has always evolved with technology, but what’s happening with AI is different.
Everything is faster. We’re creating more, and we can test ideas instantly. There’s no established playbook for AI in communications yet, but expectations are already changing, and the biggest shift isn’t the tools, it’s what counts as value.
Work that used to happen in steps (research, drafting, testing), now happens at once. Execution used to be the challenge, separating experienced practitioners from everyone else; it carries less weight now. The edge comes from how you define the problem and decide what’s worth saying. That shift changes who shapes the work.
In our own work, we’re seeing that play out as structural change in how work gets done. Instead of a single workflow, we’re building orchestrated and agentic workflows that run research, drafting, simulation, and testing in parallel. That changes the role of the team.
The focus moves from spending hours on decks and press releases to architecting how ideas move from a brief to a fully integrated campaign, and letting AI support on the first draft. This is not theoretical. The teams I’m working with are building and running these systems now. We’re developing custom agents built on comprehensive instructions and knowledge bases, testing how these agents interact, identifying where to apply constraints, and constantly working to refine and improve outputs. Strategy, creative, and analysis are no longer separate phases. They’re happening together.
Most organizations are not set up for this
For a long time, PR has run on a linear, top-down model. Ideas started at the top and moved down. Experience dictated influence. AI is flattening that in agencies willing to evolve. The gap between experience and impact is shrinking. Regardless of title, it’s the people closest to and actively using these tools that often see what’s possible first. They’re building workflows as they go. They’re testing faster, learning faster, and adjusting in real time.
But too often, that learning doesn’t shape the work. When everything has to move up the ladder to matter, you either lose the edge, or lose the opportunity.
Fluency in AI now includes more than prompting. It includes structuring workflows. For example, turning a thought leadership idea into a repeatable, AI-powered process, from gathering insights to drafting content to simulating audience response and executing a detailed risk review, all while refining the process in real time. That skill is uneven. Some teams are building it every day. Others are still observing from the sidelines. That gap will define who pulls ahead.
If you run a comms team, it’s time to stop avoiding AI
AI amplifies what we bring to it. Better inputs, better human judgment, and better solutions lead to better outcomes.
Operating this way means making experimentation part of the job, because the people designing workflows, testing ideas, and learning quickly are the ones shaping the work. They need to impact direction. They need a seat at the table.
That is the foundation for our AI Accelerator, where our team identifies needs and builds custom AI solutions for the agency, like our multi-agent orchestration system for content and message testing, with sophisticated models that synthesize audience reactions, track coverage, align with brand goals and recommend optimized outputs all in real time. This was also the motivation for our AI Academies and AI Learning series so teams can learn, experiment, and grow together, because we are embarking on a massive culture transformation, and that requires a continuous, dedicated learning effort.
By being open minded about who provides value, communications can become sharper and more responsive to the pace of the world today. Miss it, and the work will stay constrained by structures of years past. The work has evolved. Much of the industry hasn’t caught up yet.
PR is being rewritten in real time, and the firms that don’t change who shapes the work will be left editing someone else’s script.
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Max Spielman is AI Strategist at Ruder Finn.
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