Let’s say you want to compete in the Tour de France. You study what it takes to keep pace with the world's best cyclists. To your dismay, you learn that the average cyclist trains 30 hours every week for months, maybe years. You don’t have time to work that hard. So you enter the race with an e-bike—and you win!
 
Congratulations! You get all the kudos without all that wasted training time.
 
But what have you lost in doing so?
 
That’s the question communicators need to keep before them as we consider using artificial intelligence in our work—especially in writing.
 
At a recent conference, I heard a speaker suggest that communicators-in-training ought to give short shrift to writing skills in favor of other strengths—editorial judgment, strategic thinking, and so forth. Why? Because artificial intelligence will handle basic writing needs.
 
In the speaker’s defense, he was sharing a notion he gleaned elsewhere. He didn’t advocate the idea. But neither did he object to it. So I did.
 
“I’m not against using AI as a tool to help us communicate better,” I said. “But you can’t be a great editor with sound editorial judgment if you’re a crappy writer.”
 
You might think an older practitioner like me is simply doing the modern equivalent of “get off my lawn.” You would be wrong. While I’m not above greeting shiny new tools with a pinch of skepticism, I’m well aware that AI is causing a sea change in every corner of our lives. And I’m not opposed to using it in creative, constructive and careful ways.
 
What I do oppose is handing over critical, strategic human thinking—with all the emotion, good and bad, that comes with it—to a binary-coded shadow. The power of writing isn’t in its output alone. It’s in the difficult, careful, time-consuming, human process that goes with it. The harder we work at honing our writing skills, the better thinkers and communicators we become.
 
“Writing,” opined historian David McCullough, “is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”
 
Yet we seem prone to giving up the hard work in the name of efficiency. And I shudder to think what we’re leaving behind because of it.

I’m reminded daily that I’m not the smartest guy in any room.
 
Four decades into my profession, yet I constantly marvel at the insights of others and regularly rethink my way of doing things. Although referring to the craft of writing specifically, Hemingway could have been describing public relations when he said, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one becomes a master.”
 
So I feel a little unsettled when I insist that an incredibly smart, accomplished, award-winning communicator’s suggestion to change the “R” in PR is a really, really bad idea.
 
To be fair, I don’t believe Kristi Piehl’s article in Forbes is meant to launch a name-change campaign. As founder and CEO of Media Minefield, on top of her earlier experiences as a broadcast journalist, Kristi knows the value of connecting with people authentically. “The principles of connection that have always worked are timeless,” she writes in Forbes.
 
Still, I’m bothered by the hard lean the article makes toward reputation (the new “R”). In pointing out the rapidly changing dynamics—including AI—that impact it, Piehl states, “Reputation is currency. And the currency is now being exchanged and decided online.”
 
She continues: “Public Reputation rather than Public Relations shifts to modern-day practices and mindsets that are proactive rather than reactive. Public Reputation considers the problem a business is facing and understands what current and future actions its audience might take, including AI search prompts and social media searches.”
 
What bothers me isn’t that Piehl insists PR must adapt to an environment that’s changing at warp speed with new thinking, new tools and new approaches. She’s absolutely right.
 
What I find disturbing is that the article leaves an impression that reputation vs. relationship is an either-or proposition. It isn’t. It’s both-and.
 
If reputation is indeed today’s currency, then like any currency it must be earned. And the work of earning begins with relationship. Indeed, Piehl quotes the Public Relations Society of America’s definition of PR—a definition that makes this very point: “A strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” (Italics are mine.)
 
Building relationships is not a reactive strategy. It’s a constant, proactive, people-focused approach that includes—and goes beyond—reputation. Reputation is me-focused; relationship is we-focused.
 
It’s true that the “Relations” in PR are much harder to build and maintain today, for all the reasons Piehl notes. But that’s no reason to change the terminology. That’s no reason to consider relational strategies as something less than “modern-day practices.” We must adapt to technology, and to the speed at which reputations can change, without abandoning what makes our work human.
 
In solid, strategic, proactive PR, relationships must be authentic. They must be constant. Of course, they must be rooted in business, and they must play a powerful role in making the business succeed. But they can’t be limited to a metric. That’s not relational. People will see through it—with all the negative effects on reputation you’d expect.
 
If we want reputations that truly shine in our digital age, that having meaning to our publics, that draw in new business and new workers and new, promising futures, we have to do the work of forging the relationships that define our shared humanity.
 
In short, don’t change the “R.” Underscore it.

Back in 2009, I penned a short story based on the old television show Quantum Leap for an international writing contest.* Titled “No Greater Leap,” the story finds Sam as a 1980s small-town newspaper reporter who discovers tainted water wells poisoning residents. Sam risks his life to reveal the contamination before it kills a child, and he brings down the businessman trying to hide it.
 
I set the story in the 1980s because that’s when I, too, worked for a small daily newspaper in a rural county. I knew how such a newsroom operated, how small-town politics can play into things, and how a wet-behind-the-ears journalist might approach the story.
 
Most importantly, I understood the importance of a local newspaper back then. Long before social media, it was the place people gathered to find out what was happening, share opinions, and be exposed to other perspectives and analyses.
 
Decades later, that community gathering place appears to be leaping into an abyss.
 
Local news is shadowing the industry’s long decline, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. Just 21% of Americans say they follow local news, down 16 percentage points in the past decade. Local TV still leads the pack—down 7 percentage points since 2018—but online resources are growing rapidly. Only about a third of people who follow local news turn to newspapers.
 
There are two ways to look at this.
 
One involves acknowledging that the tools have changed. Why wait for a newspaper to land on your porch, or for a TV newscast to air, when you can open a browser on your smartphone whenever you like? The immediacy of today’s news vehicles makes it much easier for consumers to keep up.
 
Still, the other view could explain not just the spiral of any one medium but also the decline in interest in local news. Getting news from online forums and discussion groups risks constricting the breadth of views and analysis. There’s a temptation to live within an echo chamber, to sign on to a digital forum where your own viewpoint is affirmed and unchallenged.
 
A healthy community depends on people who are informed—meaning they understand the breadth and depth of local news, even if it doesn’t affect them directly. They listen to a wide array of opinions and perspectives. They indulge in thoughtful analysis and dialogue.
 
Online platforms, often built around clicks and shortened attention spans, rarely offer that service.
 
To be fair, there’s room for both approaches to local news. I don’t advocate kicking it old-school for old-school’s sake. But I worry that we aren’t addressing the fundamental problem.
 
Access and relevance will always be key drivers of local news success. But rather than relying on clicks and likes for content, we need to find the secret to challenging people to care.
 
 =====================
* Quantum Leap was a 1989-93 NBC TV series in which the protagonist, Dr. Sam Beckett (portrayed by Scott Bakula) is trapped on a journey through time. Beckett “leaps” into other people's bodies to fix where their lives go wrong. Fun fact: “No Greater Leap” took second place worldwide. Scott Bakula congratulated me, signed my manuscript, and posed for this photo. To my surprise, you can still download the story from the contest website.

Once upon a time, I brought my then-9-year-old daughter to hang out in my office cubicle while her mom had an appointment. At one point, her attention was caught by a beeping Mailmobile—a large robotic cart that moved office mail through the facility, guided by a magnetic strip under tile and carpet. My daughter, raised on the droids of Star Wars, tried desperately to engage the passing Mailmobile in conversation—alas, to no avail (though to great amusement on my part).
 
While the humble Mailmobile has gone the way of the Pony Express—although not as long ago as you think—office automation is no fading fad. These days it’s all about artificial intelligence (AI), computer systems designed to mimic human reasoning, decision-making and creativity.
 
While AI is artificial by definition, it pretends to be alive, sometimes quite effectively. Indeed, my daughter would have much greater success chatting with ChatGPT than with a Mailmobile. When prompted, AI can come up lots of ideas—some good, others not so much. Just like people do. Which brings us to the actual topic of this blog.
 
One thing that’s made my eyeballs ache throughout my career is the human capacity to create new words describing old (and usually common sense) ideas. We call this jargon.
 
Communicators often decry jargon. But because we work in a jargony world with jargony people, we find ourselves circling back to it. (See what I did there?) We don’t want to seem out of the loop with our business peers. (Yes, I did it there, too.) And so we leverage every opp--
 
(*Sound of me slapping my face*)
 
Anyway….
 
I had an idle moment, so I turned to a couple of AI platforms and asked each to come up with some new jargon, complete with definitions.
 
So, my fellow communicators, behold the creativity of the 1’s and 0’s! Bask in the aura of these new terms! Consider how you can use them casually at your next C-suite meeting!
 
(Or, like me, smile at them and resolve to keep jargon out of clear, thoughtful, effective communication.)
 
Frictionless Alignment — When everyone in a meeting nods along without actually agreeing on anything.
 
Cross-Functional Osmosis — The optimistic belief that teams will naturally absorb each other's knowledge simply by sitting near each other or being on the same Slack channel.
 
Ideation Runway — The amount of time allotted to brainstorm before someone from Finance shuts it down.
 
Bandwidth Harmonization — Aligning everyone’s workload so no one is overloaded or underutilized. This usually involves a meeting that, ironically, consumes everyone’s bandwidth.
 
Insight Aeration — “Fluffing up” raw data with some jargony language and a few tasteful charts so it feels more actionable.
 
Culture Looping — Believing that organizational values are best reinforced by adding them to business cards, Powerpoint footers, and the wall behind bathroom urinals.
 
Execution Elasticity — The ability of a team to stretch or compress its workflow to meet shifting deadlines without snapping (or snapping at one another).
 
Value Driftproofing — A strategic process for ensuring that a project’s original purpose doesn’t get lost after 12 rounds of stakeholder feedback. (Uncomfortable truth: It will anyway.)
 
Synergetic Uplift — The vague, unmeasurable boost in productivity that leadership claims will result from any reorganization, new initiative, or a new idea that’s just another bit of jargon.
 
As the great Sgt. Esterhaus once said: Let's be careful out there….

Like many of us with gray hair (if any), I’d never heard of Josh Cauldwell-Clarke or Jason Riley before a few weeks ago. The social media influencers’ much-ballyhooed visit to Michigan stirred a lot of attention.
 
What happened afterward made me think about our modern relationship to the news.
 
Known as “Josh & Jase,” the British duo spent three weeks bouncing around both peninsulas. Their videos oozed with joy and astonishment at Michigan’s natural wonders, engineered marvels and friendly communities. They even used their notoriety to raise $34,000 for a nonprofit shelter for the unhoused.
 
Near the end of their tour, Cauldwell-Clarke suffered a painful back injury. He was briefly hospitalized. Now back in the UK, he posted a video saying the hospital had informed him of a data breach. Without authorization, hospital staff accessed his name, date of birth, home address, phone number, account number, reason for admission, and clinical details.
 
That wasn’t all.
 
“Staff members were entering the room I was in whilst receiving treatment and asking for selfies (there are witnesses to this), whilst I was under medication and in pain,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “And I’ve kept quiet about this, but to learn employees have accessed my personal private information for their own knowledge is not okay.”
 
My first reaction to Cauldwell-Clarke’s story was a wag of the head. Health care workers know better than this. Hospitals, clinics and care facilities take privacy laws seriously. Data breaches can cost people their jobs and impose severe penalties on organizations, not to mention huge lawsuits.
 
What would possess hospital staffers to throw out their moral and legal obligations like this?
 
Then I came across a seemingly unrelated item: Pew Research Center’s latest study on America’s complicated relationship with news media. In short, the study shows that while most people agree that being informed is a civic responsibility, few actually bother to do so. They absorb the news passively—whatever comes to them or they happen upon is, they believe, all they need to know.
 
Putting aside the implications of that attitude—which are horrifying—it means that today's trusted sources are far different from those in the past.
 
Once upon a time, a trusted source was the local newspaper that arrived each day, or the local TV broadcast hosted by people who lived in and knew the community. For society at large, there were journalistic powerhouses of print and broadcast that didn’t always get it right, but they did most of the time because they knew their job was critical to a free society.
 
Now that trusted source is a TikTok personality or Instagram influencer who may or may not have the experience, credentials or even desire to deliver accurate, meaningful information. Digital platforms have birthed more than a few solid journalists, but finding them demands effort—something most Americans aren’t willing to do.
 
Worse still, those who follow influencers can form what’s called a parasocial relationship. The follower begins to believe they have a personal, intimate connection with the influencer. That familiarity becomes so strong that …
 
… a hospital staffer might feel perfectly justified in nabbing a selfie with a hurting and doped-up patient of note, or looking up his data, because “we’re friends, so he won’t mind.”
 
The same thing happens in how many of us choose to be informed. Rather than gathering news from verifiable sources, lots of consumers turn to their favorite influencer or social media platform. Connect a seemingly benign pseudo-relationship to the lack of effort to seek out accurate news, and you start to see how easily one can lose the forest of truth for the scattered trees of error (or worse, deception). The Pew study doesn’t bode well for that changing anytime soon.
 
To be clear, I’m not criticizing social media influencers. Most of them aren’t pretending to be journalists—including Cauldwell-Clarke, who wanted to share his Michigan experience with his followers. It isn’t his fault that some people formed a bond that isn’t real, then used it as an excuse to act inappropriately.
 
My critique is aimed at a public that isn’t motivated to be informed, to search out what’s real and what isn’t, but to merely take the word of their idol at face value. This remains the biggest challenge to the Fourth Estate—and to our society.
 
Each of us embracing our civic duty to be informed and seeking out accurate, meaningful news will go a long way to changing that course.

As a writer, I tend to lean on the written word. But I wouldn’t be much of a communicator if that’s all I relied on. Visual media can deliver powerful messages and prompt meaningful dialogue.
 
So I appreciate the experts who work in the visual realm. That includes classical artists who had something to say—something that resonates through the centuries.
 
Take William Powell Frith. He was a 19th-century English painter and pal of Charles Dickens. Like Dickens, Frith specialized in portraying the range of life in the Victorian era, including the disparities between rich and poor.
 
Two of Frith’s works caught my attention recently.
 
In “The Crossing Sweeper” (1858), a shoeless boy in tattered clothing, clutching a makeshift broom, pushes close to a well-to-do woman, pleading for attention. In Victorian London, crossing sweepers were poor people of all ages who cleared walkways through manure- and refuse-littered streets in hopes of a handout. But the woman in the painting isn’t interested. She gathers up her dress while studiously ignoring him, her expression a mixture of forced calm and a desire for escape.
 
“Poverty and Wealth” (1888) is more complex but tells a similar tale. On one side of a narrow street is a carriage with two young governesses and three children. The wealthy mother prepares to board, a porter following along with her belongings. Just a few feet away, poorly clad women and children gather, tightly clustered around a fish vendor. Most of the people in each group have their backs turned to the other, save for the porter’s wary look, the sad expression of a governess, and the resentful scowl of an old woman in the fish line.
 
I took many ideas away after viewing these paintings, the biggest being this: “If I don’t look, it’s not there” is an ageless—and deeply flawed—rationale.
 
Consider the plight of unhoused people. Like most of us, I’m appalled that the wealthiest country in the world has so many people facing homelessness. Shelters offer some relief, provided there are enough beds and staff. Even so, thousands of individuals and families live in their cars, in tents in the woods, or on park benches—from the youngest children to the oldest veterans.
 
Homelessness is an incredibly complex issue. There isn’t a single reason for it, so there isn’t one magic solution. Financial hardship, mental illness, addictions, domestic violence, discrimination, lack of affordable housing, lack of support services, lack of employment or employability, or a mix of any of these can leave a person homeless.
 
Even so, you’d think American ingenuity and compassion, fueled by knowledge and resources, could be brought to bear. If we could land humans on the moon with 1960s technology, we can tackle something like this in the 2020s.
 
Instead, we’d rather not look.
 
The sweeping of homeless encampments, notably in Washington D.C., gets justified with “public safety” and “stopping crime” or “keeping our streets clean” (a particularly insulting argument).
 
But in fact, it’s about managing perception. It’s about what we see and what we don’t. If we see that the benches and sidewalks are clear, homelessness isn’t a problem. If we see no tents in the woods, no panhandlers on street corners, then there’s no one in financial need. When looking away is impossible, we insist on seeing only what we want to see—often with help from those who select (or create wholesale) the images for us.
 
Homelessness isn’t the only issue we treat like this. Looking away “solves” lots of problems. Poverty. Climate change. Access to health care. The crisis in education. Unpleasant historical facts. Deficits and debt. Criminal behavior by politicians (unless they’re on the “other side”). Oppression. Injustice. And on and on and on.
 
What’s a communicator to do?
 
Again, as I often do in this blog, I come back to the need to be morally and ethically grounded. When we communicate, by whatever means, we must do so with transparency. Sometimes that means pointing out uncomfortable things—and, ideally, with a plan for addressing them, or at least a conversation on how to move forward together.
 
In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the old man behind the curtain tries to get Dorothy and her crew to look away from him. He knew that, in seeing him, they would realize the truth: The Wizard was fake.
 
The painter Frith hoped that, in seeing the social divides he painted, his patrons would know the truth as well: People were in need, and the means to help was close at hand.
 
As communicators, and as consumers, we must have the courage to face reality as it is—and come together to bridge the divides.

Back in 2019, once-and-future President Donald Trump made this pronouncement: “There has never been, ever before, an administration that’s been so open and transparent.”
 
While most will dispute that statement, this week’s big news (so far) might actually support it. Just not in a good way.
 
On Monday, The Atlantic reported that editor Jeffrey Goldberg had been added to a group chat of Trump administration leaders discussing the then-upcoming U.S. bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen. Those in the group included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and over a dozen others. They were using the encrypted messaging app Signal, which is open-sourced and publicly available—raising concerns about the leak of classified information and legal concerns about using Signal to share it.
 
So far it appears Goldberg was added to the chat accidentally. His report avoided details he felt were sensitive or that could put military personnel or intelligence operations at risk. However, he noted the chat included specifics that proved true once the strikes took place.
 
The administration quickly went into crisis mode. Intelligence leaders assured Congress that while the chat contained “sensitive” details, it didn’t include classified information. President Trump defended Waltz in a media briefing, while others in the administration and Republicans in Congress tried to characterize the incident as “sensationalist.” Some even reached back to Hillary Clinton’s private email server for cover—a comparison that experts say isn’t the same.
 
While the internet is enjoying a meme-athon over all this, clearly Washington isn’t amused. There are many thorny legal questions already being posed. Answers that satisfy will be tough.
 
It seems unlikely that this incident will fade from the spotlight without somebody taking the fall. It’s possible that Waltz will offer to take the hit and resign. But given the administration’s lack of willingness to own any error, I worry that the blame will be shifted elsewhere. Signal might take a hit, perhaps. But I think it’s more likely fingers will point at The Atlantic—and, by association, the news media in general.
 
The Trump administration’s disdain for mainstream media is well documented. Hanging The Atlantic and Goldberg out to dry—might they levy an espionage charge based on Goldberg’s failure to remove himself from the chat, even if he believed it was a scam?—would certainly serve that narrative.
 
Such a “spin” of this incident would further damage media’s efforts to cover this government while making a supposedly transparent administration even more opaque than it is.
 
The lesson for communicators? Transparency is about honesty and accountability. I'm not optimistic we’ll see much of that in the coming days.

Want a lesson in trust and confidence? Watch competitive cheerleading.
 
My granddaughter has been competing for nearly a decade. She now stunts at the college level. The way she and her teammates move in sync is fun to watch, but it’s the actual stunting—young women hoisted upward, flipping and twirling in midair, then landing solidly in strong arms, smiles never leaving their faces—that’s truly impressive. (And, admittedly, a bit disconcerting at times to this Papa.)
 
These acrobatics happen because every cheerleader, regardless of role, has faith in the rest of the team. When faith wavers, the routine fails.
 
Communicators appear to be facing a crisis of faith themselves, according to a new survey of CEOs conducted by The Weber Shandwick Collective. The survey found just 17% of CEOs believe their communication and public affairs teams are ready to deal with the cascade of economic, geopolitical and cultural change happening today.
 
I’ll admit, in my four-plus decades in communications, the rate of change today is beyond anything I’ve ever imagined. We’re not drinking from the clichéd firehose, we’re guzzling from Niagara Falls. The “what-ifs” in our dusty crisis manuals are as outdated as a rotary phone. In the United States alone, political, social and economic structures is being upended—and in many cases, shredded.
 
As tempting as it is to “wait it out,” we can’t. Change isn't stopping, and our role is absolutely vital to our clients’ and companies’ ability to manage it effectively. Not only must the organizations we serve feel confident in us, so must the customers and other stakeholders they engage with.
 
That’s a tough standard to meet, given that we live in a highly suspicious world.
 
The good news is, leaders recognize the value of communications. The same survey found most CEOs plan to invest in marketing and brand building, public affairs, crisis, government and other communication disciplines. While I’m saddened to see less emphasis on social responsibility and equity, diversity and inclusion, the fact remains that our abilities remain business-critical.
 
Where do communicators go from here? We need to be exceptionally agile and resilient. Like those cheerleaders, that means constantly working on our communication muscles—staying abreast of changes, considering impact on business, adapting faster than ever to demands, applying the right tools (not just the shiny new ones) in the right ways.
 
It also means being even stronger champions of facts, honesty and transparency, even as some in society choose to deceive with aplomb. Suspicion ultimately withers in the light of truth.
 
And that’s worth cheering about.

Few tasks by PR practitioners are as tough as responding to a tragic death.
 
Yet that was the job to befall the team at UnitedHealth Group last week. A shooter gunned down Brian Thompson, CEO of insurance giant United HealthCare, outside a New York hotel. Police believe the killing was deliberate and targeted. The three bullets removed from Thompson’s body had etched into them the words “Deny,” “Defend” and “Depose”—shorthand among industry critics describing how health insurers reject claims.
 
UnitedHealth’s statement contained what you’d expect under the circumstances: acknowledgement of heartbreak, appreciation for those who reached out, support for Thompson’s family and friends, and a just wee bit of business messaging that seemed a little tone deaf but not surprising.
 
By and large, that’s fine. But the task won’t be wrapped up by a one-and-done standby. There’s a bigger challenge facing UnitedHealth, the health insurance industry, and perhaps the corporate world as a whole. This tragedy quickly morphed into a much broader discussion about the ethics and behavior of the industry. PR practitioners must address it head-on.
 
Almost immediately after Thompson’s death, social media lit up with FAFO messages. Among the more tame yet disturbing posts: “My thoughts and prayers were out of network.” “…might be the most celebrated death on [X, formerly known as Twitter] since Henry Kissinger.” "When you shoot one man in the street, it's murder. When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment, you're an entrepreneur."
 
Yolanda Wilson, a professor of Health Care Ethics at St. Louis University, told NPR that the response reflects deep-seated frustration and anger at health insurers; Thompson’s killing gave them the opportunity to speak in unison.
 
While I’m no fan of health insurers’ meddling, I find the celebratory posts about Thompson’s murder distasteful and chilling. He was a human being and a family man. Hating a company’s practices shouldn’t give license to applauding how a wife has been widowed and children have lost their father.
 
However, it does appear that this “wake-up call” isn’t rousing the right discussion in this or any other industry. Deleting executive photos from websites and beefing up security fail to address the real issue of what’s stoking the rage.
 
Here is where PR needs to step up and show its value—to the business, to the customer, and to society. And that step will probably involve some discomfort.
 
We cannot merely serve as a mouthpiece for the organization. Part of making sure our client’s voice is heard is listening. What are stakeholders saying in full? Are we making sure the organization hears and understands that in full? Are we engaging in those uncomfortable conversations—as tough as they are—to help find meaningful solutions? If we aren’t, then we’re not serving anyone.
 
I’m under no delusion that health insurers will transform its business model, nor that patients will become industry cheerleaders. The truth is, both parties have very different priorities.
 
But as communicators who believe in two-way, relational, mutually beneficial dialogue, PR pros need to gather the voices, be willing to deliver the tough messages, and lead the effort to help all parties find a path that doesn’t involve people dying—on a sidewalk or in a bed.

Here’s the scenario: A company announces major layoffs. It offers interviews with its spokesperson over Zoom. The spokesperson hits the key messages perfectly every time, including the company’s  concern and support for those affected, and answers a few questions. Reporters post their stories, quoting the spokesperson on the facts.
 
Now the twist: No actual spokesperson took part. The reporters interviewed a virtual clone created by generative artificial intelligence.
 
Using AI to make avatars isn’t all that new — relatively speaking, anyway — but the speed of its development is unsettling. Deepfakes, digitally replacing one person with the image and/or voice of another, are increasingly sophisticated and harder to tell from the real thing. (Watch for lots more of them in the run-up to the election).
 
Then along comes this report from NPR about a Chinese AI company that can create a seemingly real digital replica of a human from just a one-hour scan and 100 spoken phrases. In one example, it allowed a social media influencer to hawk products during multiple, simultaneous livestreams —  all without actually being on camera. (In another, an executive digitally cloned his cherubic son to maintain their father-son bond when the child grew into surly teen.)
 
What’s seen as a boon for e-commerce worries me from a PR standpoint. How long before we start using avatars to speak on behalf of companies and clients? Digital spokespersons are always available, always fresh and always on message. Best of all, you don’t have to pay them, offer health insurance or contribute to their 401k. And as long as they deliver the message accurately, should it matter?
 
Yes. Profoundly.
 
Fundamental to our profession is trust. Read the PRSA Code of Ethics, and you’ll find that word aplenty. Trust is rooted in the human experience — what we say, how we say it, how we engage with one another in the saying. It’s rooted in being accountable and reliable. Remove the human element, and you have the words but not the ownership. Not the soul.
 
I’m especially thoughtful of this when it comes to delivering bad news. No one likes to do it. As technology advances, it’ll be more than a little tempting to tap a few keys and let a virtual you do the dirty work.
 
But here’s the thing: Delivering bad news should suck. It should hurt. We should feel at least some of the pain felt by those directly affected.
 
Over my career, I’ve served as a media spokesperson for over two dozen major layoff announcements, affecting scores of people to thousands — not to mention whole communities. Every last one of those experiences was awful. But by being there with the people affected, doing what I could to support them, demonstrating how my clients were doing what they could (or at least what they were prepared to do) to ease the impact, brought a vital human element. Maybe that didn’t stop the breaking of trust, but I believe it was essential to the long process of rebuilding it.
 
If nothing else, it was the human thing to do. No AI avatar will ever pull that off.
 
I’m partly relieved that the U.S. and other countries are talking about ethical guidelines for AI development and use. I hope such talk becomes concrete action. The PR profession must take a lead role in making it so.