Will PR Survive AI?

My job is under attack! My identity is under attack!

“Will PR survive AI?” is a coward’s attempt to arrest my peers’ attention. It’s the tip of my anxiety’s iceberg.

But frozen landscapes melt quickly these days, revealing their ancient essence: “Will I survive AI?”

For two decades, I saluted a king called Content. A generous monarch who gave millions of millennials with a wishy-washy education in the humanities work, money, status. Now, the meaning of our skill set is evaporating like half of Marvel’s population in Infinity War.

I take it personally. The last thing I need as a middle-aged woman with a husk of social clout is to become more invisible.

Write a press release, a white paper, a LinkedIn caption – there’s a prompt for that.

As the ethers are flooded with adequate and uniform output, we need to ask ourselves not only, “Do we want to read that?” More importantly: “Did we ever enjoy creating it in the first place?”

“Ask Me Anything”, says AI’s invitation. There must be a reason why the first thing we ask is, “Do my job, please.”

I was on the verge of resignation when a story fell into my lap last year. A story I needed to write. On the page, not for the algorithm (and obviously not for my wallet).

As I confronted inner and outer demons with the pen (tbh: keyboard, let’s not get romantic), I discovered my voice, my love of writing, my favorite place to create: my brain.

Not only do I know all the people there. I fell in love with its uniqueness: its quirks that mirror my wry smile, its impossible demands for input, and the way its engine somehow runs specifically on the sensation of strands of my hair curling around my fingers (the waves in this picture aren’t natural).

How do I become visible again? Posting selfies might help. But even more than that, and here lies the path to our profession’s survival as storytellers: leaning into my humanity, not my identity.