Crisis communications needs an overhaul if PR professionals are to keep pace with today’s media landscape and how crises unfold. The speed and reach of social media, the proliferation of misinformation and clickbait, and the constant demand for information require an agile, transparent response with no room for error. That’s the type of response that only comes with planning and preparedness, supported by powerful tools.
Modern technology is part of the problem with today’s crisis communications response, but it can also be part of the solution. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) may never fully replace a communications professional’s critical thinking skills, intuition, judgment, and empathy, all of which are vital in crisis communications, but it may help with planning, research, and strategy, enabling you to execute more quickly and efficiently.
Predict and Prepare
Various types of AI achieve different goals. Predictive AI uses data and analytics to look at patterns and predict outcomes. Several PR tools based on predictive AI can be useful in crisis communications planning, helping teams see a crisis coming before it hits. These tools can patrol social media, online media, and other key digital platforms and channels for brand sentiment and flag when that sentiment changes. Data collected from AI-generated insights allow PR professionals to make more informed decisions and implement a more proactive crisis response.
AI is modernizing the classic tabletop exercise. Tools such as HacktheBox and Everbridge xMatters take a digital-first approach to crisis response management, fully measuring and developing organizational crisis readiness.
Different AI models add serious scale and firepower to any comms operations, giving you back valuable bandwidth for the work that called you to PR in the first place. It’s time to think more strategically about using AI beyond copywriting or content creation.
An Unreliable Copywriter
Currently, many communications professionals leverage GenAI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini to help them generate content. So far, this has produced mixed results regarding quality and reduced the amount of work for these professionals. Many reporters will outright state that they don’t want responses from PR people generated from AI and use tools to detect it. Too often, comms pros spend more hours editing the work produced by AI content engines than they would’ve spent writing it themselves. That’s because AI wasn’t originally meant to replace human PR professionals’ creativity and problem-solving skills.
AI can be a positive factor for smaller communications teams strapped for resources and tasked with creating an unending amount of crisis comms content and playbooks. Instead of tapping GenAI tools to handle the part of the job you love the most, leverage them to supercharge your team’s productivity and reduce your risk of burnout.
Your Always-On Assistant for Crisis Communications
AI can learn and automate the tasks that diminish your creativity, such as monitoring media coverage, calculating impressions, or measuring sentiment. Workflow automation tools can help with time management or media relations. Examples include email organizational tools that remind you when to follow up with a reporter, or workflow tools that walk you through all of the planning and steps around crisis communications planning. Let AI take some of this huge burden off your shoulders instead of doing the things that you do best.
GenAI can help communications professionals generate templates and outlines for crisis planning scenarios or as the basis for crisis response playbooks. It can generate steps for crisis response playbooks based on specific crises, such as workplace violence, a data breach, or an employee bad actor crisis.
Rather than generating content for you, GenAI can make you a better writer by highlighting important case studies or finding relevant statistics and data sets to help you prove your point. Think of it as your “always-on digital assistant” who is waiting and ready to chase down data or workflow items you need to get work done.
Some examples of how to use Gen AI include:
- Formatting media list frameworks for press outreach and influencer relations (instead of writing the pitch directly)
- Strengthening a press release outline (as opposed to writing the piece)
- Conducting data-driven, relevant market research for a media pitch or op-ed with inline citations (instead of pulling random facts from the internet)
- Building a social media editorial calendar template (as opposed to creating the social posts)
- Drafting an outline, including formatting and headline ideas, for quarterly PR content planning (without writing the content directly)
- Brainstorming potential thought leadership topics for a subject matter expert by inputting their bio or area of expertise
- Translate a press release into multiple languages for a global campaign using the GenAI translate tool
Agentic AI: The Future of Crisis Communications
There’s a reason PRWeek called 2025 “The Year of Agentic AI,” and WPP is betting heavily on the value of Agentic AI, acquiring InfoSum to help them unify consumer data and manage capabilities for clients. Further, Edelman has embedded its Trust Barometer into a proprietary AI tool called Archie. It now dynamically tracks how trust moves for specific brands and provides real-time recommendations to improve trust. More than 50 of its largest clients are paying to use it on a subscription basis.
Agentic AI, or Agent-based Artificial Intelligence, operates independently, much like a human, to achieve specific goals. Unlike Chat GPT, which simply processes and responds to prompts, Agentic AI offers a degree of autonomy and decision-making. Think of Agentic AI as your highly intelligent assistant.
Examples of comms-related Agentic AI include:
- Ottogrid: Build targeted media lists in minutes. Enter the query, “Find journalists at top-tier business press outlets who cover AI startups.” Or, “Find all clean cosmetics influencers in New York City.”
- AI-based media monitoring tools such as Meltwater, Cision, or Prowly
- AI-based source matching tools such as Dazzle
For more junior PR and communications professionals, Agentic AI can save hours, even days, of on-the-job training when time is of the essence and the pressure is on to deliver.
Improving Job Quality
PR is consistently ranked as one of the most stressful careers. Communications teams face tremendous pressure and risk severe burnout in the best of times, but especially during periods of uncertainty. For smaller corporate communications teams, these responsibilities often fall on one or two people who produce significant volumes of research, strategy, messaging, and actionable crisis communications plans. AI tools can act as a force multiplier, enabling strapped communications teams to boost productivity and focus on what matters most. These tools can run in the background, even on the weekends, so you don’t have to be glued to your phone, sacrificing your days off.
Now is the time to embrace AI to help you become more productive and better serve your clients. Not only will it help you be more efficient, but it will also help you preserve your sanity when the pressure is high. And, let’s face it, the pressure is always high.
