18 December 2025
Humans on the front line, AI in the engine room – how PR must reinvent itself
AI in communications will not succeed because of the tools we buy, but because of the humans we empower. The future of PR is humans on the front line, AI in the engine room, working to a completely different model of value, culture and ownership.
Right now, many comms leaders are stuck in a false choice. Either they cling to traditional, manual ways of working, or they are sold a fantasy of full automation that quietly writes people out of the story. Neither reflects the reality that real influence is driven by human judgement, relationships and narrative, not by tools alone.
The reality is simple: AI is the engine, humans are the drivers. If you put the engine in charge of the journey, you do not get progress, you get danger.
The best campaigns still depend on very human skills. Reading nuance in a boardroom. Understanding internal politics. Spotting the shift in public mood that is not yet in any dashboard. Knowing when to hold a line and when to move. No model can yet do that work for you. It can only help you do it better.
That means the real opportunity for comms leaders is not to automate communications. It is to redesign the operating model so human creativity and judgement sit at the centre, with AI taking care of the heavy lifting that gets in their way.
In our own world, we are moving beyond the traditional agency model into something closer to software-with-a-service. Not software instead of people; software that changes what people spend their time on. Low value, manual tasks are systematically reduced. The value of the partnership shifts toward strategy, creativity and orchestration.
This is not just about efficiency, it is about impact and culture. Teams that spend less time formatting decks and chasing reports have more energy for ideas, counsel and relationships. That reduces burnout. It creates clearer career paths in an AI powered environment and a culture that attracts the kind of talent clients actually want on their business.
Ownership of intelligence is another fault line that comms leaders cannot ignore. Too much of our industry has been built on renting access to opaque intermediaries. Data that is hard to extract. Insight that lives in systems you do not control. In an AI age, that becomes an even bigger risk.
If AI is the engine room of your communications, you should own the engine. That means architecture, contracts and cultures that treat data and insight as assets to be built, protected and grown inside the organisation, not as a by-product locked away in someone else’s black box.
There is also a wider accountability question. As AI becomes embedded in how we plan, target and measure communications, there will be tougher questions about how these systems are governed, what sits behind them and whose interests they serve. Comms leaders will need clear answers.
They have an opportunity to set a higher bar. That means choosing partners who can be open about how their systems work, how data is handled and how bias and risk are managed. It means treating AI not just as a productivity play, but as part of a more transparent, responsible communications system that you are comfortable explaining to boards, employees and external stakeholders alike.
Put these threads together and you start to see a different narrative for our industry. Not just AI for marketing and PR, but a better model for how marketing and communications operate commercially, culturally and ethically in an AI age. One that is more scalable and defensible than the collapsing, time-and-materials holding company paradigm.
For teams, this model means more intellectually stimulating work and more space for real thinking. For clients, it means faster execution, higher quality and a more honest commercial structure. For the industry, it means a chance to reset expectations about what a modern communications partner actually does.
None of this happens if humans are treated as an afterthought. Winning hearts and minds internally is a non-negotiable first step. Clear commitments to skill building, creative freedom and career progression are as important as any product roadmap. You cannot claim to be building the future of communications while quietly hollowing out the craft.
This is an exciting moment for PR. The disruption is real, and the stakes are high, but so is the opportunity. If we get this right, AI will not reduce the role of communications, it will elevate it by freeing the best people in our industry to do the work only they can do.
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