Generations before us have grappled with the advent of personal computers, the internet and email – all of which made communications more efficient and precise, but not without new challenges and risks. In more recent history, we’ve seen social media open up a world of opportunity to communicators and marketeers, again requiring care and resourcefulness to get the best from it.
In 2023, the introduction of reliable and accessible Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings fresh challenges and promises new opportunities. Hailed as the driver of a fifth industrial revolution, AI has the power to fundamentally change the way communicators – and businesses in general – work.
At Torque, we believe AI has the potential to be a force for good both for our team and our clients. Since the start of the year, we’ve been learning all we can about the coming generation of AI, testing tools and developing our own protocols for their use.
Today, we are proud to be proactively using AI to augment the work we do. We don’t believe AI is a replacement, a hack or a quick fix, but rather a tool that has the power to enhance the work our highly skilled and experienced team does day-in, day-out.
That’s why our team already includes three certified prompt engineers – experts in using AI tools of all types – and counting. Our entire team uses tools such as ChatGPT, Google Bard and Midjourney on a daily basis to responsibly research, create, analyse and validate content. Read more about what this means here.
It goes without saying that AI is a powerful tool if it can be harnessed correctly, but with this great power comes great responsibility. That’s why we’re upskilling our team to ensure we’re using AI ethically, safely, and accurately.
We’ve also developed our own set of guiding principles for using AI in communications, which you can read here. The principles are anchored in the idea that AI can be a force for good in communications if it is embraced proactively and pragmatically. Everyone in the team is bought into them, which helps ensure any AI-based output meets our high standards for quality, while protecting against common concerns such as hallucination.
We’re not just using AI for content creation, either. Our prompt engineers know how to use these tools to help tackle complex business and organisational issues as well. We’re developing new use cases and solutions every day and are already using AI to improve our own processes. For example, one member of our team wrote a simple AI programme that helps them organise their day to be as productive as possible.
While AI is undeniably a game-changer, preserving the human touch in every aspect of our work will always be fundamental to how we do business. Our team members possess a wealth of industry knowledge, critical thinking skills, and a deep understanding of our clients’ specific needs. We believe it is this combination of human creativity and AI-driven automation that is the key to achieving the highest standards of communication in the modern world.
Our ultimate objective as a PR and communications specialist is to provide our clients with a superior quality of service and help them meet their marketing and business objectives. Embracing AI, in our view, gives us the best chance of doing that.
