The second AI conference of the agency network PROI, Public Relations Organisations International, took place in Warsaw in mid-March. Sabine Pöhacker and Sarah Krasser-Fuchs from the Vienna based agency comm:unications took part from the Austrian side.

Around 40 agency representatives travelled to Poland’s capital to spend two days on a deep dive on artificial intelligence. Where do Europe’s leading PR agencies stand in the use of AI, what are the challenges and where is the future heading?  In contrast to 2023, all agencies in the PROI network now use AI, starting with ChatGPT, ChatGPT-4, Leonardo, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude, with each programme or model having different strengths – for example in the areas of text creation, research or visualisation. Sarah Krasser-Fuchs from comm:unications: “We are constantly learning to feed AI with text modules, goals and inputs, the next step is to link different tools with each other in order to be able to map entire processes and workflows – that is the added value with which you can also impress customers.”

Best practices for customers

The German fischerAppelt Group created photo material for a major car manufacturer, whereby the vehicle was placed in an AI-generated winter landscape – the costs for the photo shoot at the North Pole were unnecessary, the added value for the customer and the creatives is obvious. In Lithuania, the Salve Agency used AI to predict the election results. The Belgian agency Whyte uses AI for public affairs, with facial recognition of individual MPs also revealing their political positions, diaries and real-time activities.

“Be careful that AI doesn’t take over your thinking,” says Jakub Hrabovasky from Ewing PR in the Czech Republic. His agency used personas to create customised advertising for social media channels for a fast-food chain. “The biggest hurdle is feeding the personas in such a way that they work reliably”. Speaking of which: the data material in the background was paid for.

Implementation of AI in agencies

Many agencies – regardless of age – would like to use ChatGPT & Co more, but don’t have enough time to familiarise themselves with it. To reach the next level, many creative agencies have their own AI managers who are responsible for implementing new solutions. It is also important to integrate AI into the culture and existing workflows to proceed in a process-orientated manner. Many PROI agencies hold weekly meetings and share best practices to ensure that this is successful in the long term. And even in the age of AI, it is important to utilise the knowledge of PR seniors to help juniors progress.

A spirit of optimism with hurdles

AI will revolutionise day-to-day agency work, but the path still needs to be paved: The selection of AI tools is becoming unmanageable, testing takes a lot of time, and the acquisition costs are also becoming increasingly significant. In addition to data protection and compliance, customers also must give their consent. Sarah Krasser-Fuchs: “It gets exciting once the agency and client work together transparently and in partnership to redesign processes together.  This allows efficiency and creativity to be maximised.”

80/20 becomes 10/80/10

The well-known formula that 80 per cent is done by humans and 20 per cent by machines is obsolete. In future, ten per cent human input, 80 per cent machine and then another ten per cent fine-tuning by human intelligence will be required. Sabine Pöhacker summarises: “With the support of artificial intelligence, we can create added value that pays off for everyone. But despite the euphoria, it will still be vital to use our own brainpower.”