We’ve always had to move with the times as technology changes things, and quickly too. Long gone are the days of waiting for the paper copies of Hansard (thankfully before my time). From the 24-hour news cycle to social media, politics moves at lightning speed – and we are expected to keep up.
AI simply accelerates that. We are all well aware that research and writing that once took hours can be pulled together in minutes. And for an industry that already prizes responsiveness, that is hugely valuable.
But recently, I’ve started to notice the drawbacks of said acceleration.
Now I think we’re still at the stage where we can tell when something is AI generated. Whether that be on LinkedIn posts, event invites or graphics, I think I have a pretty good ‘AI Slop’ radar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive that AI can do all of these things. But I’m not sure it’s always necessary.
It begs a more fundamental question, just because we can use AI, should we? And, ultimately, is faster always better?
When I started my career in public affairs, AI did not exist as a professional tool in the way it does now. I’ve watched it become more integral to our industry, and as a result, my day to day life.
AI can create a pretty spot-on monitoring document independently, it sends me automated transcripts of relevant speeches immediately. I’ve even been known to ask it to check my work before I send it to my manager!
And, in many ways, these are great things. It’s not that I love spending hours copying information between spreadsheets or reading through research papers. If anything, I appreciate that AI makes me more productive by automating those kinds of tasks.
But it’s clear to me that there comes a risk if we assume that just because we can use AI, we should. If every bit of a comms plan is AI-generated, how do people perceive us, and our work? At what point does ease begin to look like a lack of care?
I think that’s why I’m so bothered about the recent flooding of AI-generated content. Not because I doubt the technology’s ability to create something. But because I worry about what it does to our industry.
What happens to our individual identities if everyone’s content looks the same? What happens to the people who used to write the Linkedin posts, or make the event graphics, do they never get to learn those skills? We need people who use AI to enhance their work, not people who never learn how the work is done in the first place.
At the end of the day, Public Affairs is a people business. Our job is to understand other people, anticipate their thinking and build strong relationships with them.
Yes, our outputs matter (and even the speed at which we create those outputs!), but what is crucial there is our personal judgement. That’s where we add value.
There is a temptation to automate everything – certainly it’s possible to. But I think I speak for everyone when I say this. People notice. If you use AI to generate a photo of Parliament, people will notice!
If we remove the human touch from our industry, we may look more polished, but we will also be faceless. And for an industry built on relationships, that feels like a strange trade-off.
So where should we draw the line?
AI is not going away, and nor should it. It supports us as we adapt to the pace of this mad political world. And as the technology improves, who knows what it will be capable of.
The most important thing we can do is safeguard the human connection that sits at the heart of our organisations. We cannot optimise so relentlessly for speed that we automate away the unique and human parts of ourselves. That is what we so desperately need.
Invest in the technology. But above all else, invest in your people too.