In the Age of AI: Do we have to change PR Strategy?

By Tyron Devotta

There was a time when the nexus between public relations and the media was relatively straightforward. Public relations practitioners crafted messages, media evaluated them, and audiences consumed the resulting news through newspapers, radio and television. While the boundaries were often contested, they remained visible. Public relations sought to persuade, journalism sought to inform, and the audience acted largely as a receiver of information.

Today, those boundaries have become less clear.

The communications industry stands at a significant tipping point. The convergence of artificial intelligence, search technologies, digital platforms and changing media consumption habits is transforming not only how information is distributed, but how public perception itself is formed. In this environment, the question is no longer where public relations meets the media. The more relevant question is where advocacy, journalism, search and artificial intelligence intersect to create public understanding.

The new lense

For much of the twentieth century, public relations operated within a media ecosystem defined by silos. Newspapers, television stations and magazines occupied identifiable editorial positions. Some were considered conservative, others liberal, while many attempted to occupy the centre ground. Audiences interpreted information through these lenses and formed opinions accordingly.

A public relations strategy therefore involved understanding these positions and placing stories where they would resonate most effectively. Advocacy was largely about influencing opinion leaders, who in turn influenced wider public opinion. Press releases, media briefings, interviews and feature placements formed the core tools of the communications profession.

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered this equation.

Increasingly, people do not begin their search for information by opening a newspaper or visiting a preferred news website. They now ask an AI assistant a question. And even if one gets on to Google, there is an AI assistant there too! So what they receive is not a single article, editorial or perspective, but a synthesized summary assembled from multiple sources.

This is a profound change because audiences are no longer consuming information in the traditional sense. They are curating it.

Distilled information

The modern information consumer is overwhelmed by volume. Every day thousands of articles, videos, reports, posts and opinions compete for attention. Faced with this abundance, people are no longer reading for the sake of reading. They are searching with purpose. They are filtering information to meet a specific need, answer a particular question or solve a defined problem.

Artificial intelligence has become the intermediary in this process.

Its role is not merely to retrieve information but to distil it. AI filters noise, identifies patterns, extracts key themes and presents a condensed version of what it believes to be the most relevant information available. The audience increasingly values this distillation because it saves time and reduces complexity.

This is where many communications professionals misunderstand what is taking place.

Artificial intelligence does not think like a newspaper editor.

A human editor asks whether a story is newsworthy, interesting, timely or aligned with the expectations of a publication’s audience. AI asks a different set of questions. What information is most relevant to the query? Which facts appear consistently across multiple sources? Which claims are supported by evidence? Which explanations best fit the wider body of available information?

In other words, AI is not primarily evaluating importance. It is evaluating patterns.

Stand alone

This distinction is crucial because it changes the mechanics of influence.

For decades, public relations focused on generating coverage. Success was often measured by column inches, airtime, circulation figures or the prominence of a headline. In an AI-driven environment, a single article has limited influence if it exists in isolation.

Artificial intelligence is far more likely to identify a narrative when it encounters repetition across multiple credible sources.

A government report, an academic paper, an industry publication, a newspaper article, an expert interview and a corporate white paper may all contribute to a common understanding of a subject. When similar themes emerge repeatedly, AI begins to recognize a pattern. It is these patterns that increasingly shape summaries, search results and ultimately public perception.

For communicators, this means that one article is a story.

Multiple connected references become a narrative.

The implication is profound. Public relations must move from campaign-centric thinking to narrative-centric thinking.

Communications has traditionally been dominated by campaign-centric thinking, which starts with a specific objective, event, or message and asks, “What do we want people to know, feel, or do right now?” The campaign becomes the centre of gravity, with success measured by awareness, engagement, behaviour change, or media coverage. 

Narrative-centric thinking, however, begins with a much larger question: “What story about the world are people already telling themselves?” A narrative is not a campaign; it is an enduring framework through which people interpret events, connect facts, and assign meaning. 

While campaigns seek to influence immediate perceptions and actions, narratives shape how audiences understand a series of events over time. In this sense, campaigns are temporary signals, whereas narratives are the lasting stories into which those signals are woven. The most effective communications strategies recognise that individual campaigns may come and go, but each one contributes to a broader narrative that ultimately defines how an organisation, issue, or idea is understood.

The challenge is no longer simply getting information published. The challenge is ensuring that information becomes part of a broader body of knowledge that artificial intelligence can recognize, connect and retrieve.

This requires an understanding of what might be called narrative architecture.

AI appears to place significant value on four factors.

First, repetition. Information repeated across multiple independent sources becomes a stronger signal.

Second, authority. Expert commentary, research institutions, professional bodies, recognised media organisations and official reports carry greater influence than unsupported assertions.

Third, freshness. Narratives are dynamic and must be continuously reinforced as new information emerges.

Fourth, connectivity. AI seeks relationships between people, organisations, events, places and ideas. It attempts to understand not only individual facts but how those facts relate to one another.

In effect, artificial intelligence is building a vast map of interconnected knowledge. It recognizes patterns.

Computer scientists refer to this as a knowledge graph. (A knowledge graph is a structured network of people, places, organizations, events, concepts, and objects, linked together by their relationships) Communications professionals might think of it as the ultimate exercise in connecting the dots.

This is why the old public relations habit of viewing each media placement as a standalone success is becoming less effective. Individual stories matter, but their true value lies in how they connect to a larger narrative.

The necklace

The metaphor is not that of firing a shotgun and hoping enough pellets hit the target. Rather, it is the construction of a string of pearls. Each pearl has value on its own, but its significance comes from its connection to the others. Over time, those connections form a coherent narrative that is more likely to be recognized, interpreted and surfaced by artificial intelligence systems.

The role of strategy therefore becomes significantly more important than the role of tactics.

Press releases remain relevant. Media relations remain important. Advocacy remains necessary. However, they must now serve a larger purpose. Every communication activity should contribute to a long-term narrative architecture rather than an isolated publicity objective.

The implications extend beyond public relations.

Journalism itself is evolving within an environment where audiences increasingly seek context, interpretation and relevance rather than simply access to information. The challenge for both journalists and communications professionals is to maintain credibility in an era where information is constantly being compared, aggregated and synthesized.

For journalists, credibility will continue to depend on verification, transparency and intellectual honesty. For public relations practitioners, it will depend on authenticity, consistency and factual accuracy. In an age where AI can rapidly compare sources and identify contradictions, trust becomes an increasingly valuable asset.

This is where public relations and media now meet.

Not simply on the pages of newspapers or the screens of television broadcasts, but within a broader information ecosystem where knowledge is continuously assembled, interpreted and refined. The battleground is no longer the front page. It is the narrative layer that sits above thousands of individual pieces of content.

The future belongs to those who understand that audiences are no longer passive consumers of information. They are curators of knowledge. Artificial intelligence has become the tool through which that curation takes place.

The old communications model was relatively simple:

Message → Media Coverage → Audience.

The emerging model is considerably more complex:

Fact → Context → Narrative → AI Distillation → Audience Understanding.

For communicators, the lesson is clear. Success will increasingly depend not on how many stories are published, but on how effectively those stories contribute to a larger, credible and enduring narrative.

In the age of artificial intelligence, influence is no longer measured by visibility alone. It is measured by relevance, coherence and the ability to survive the process of distillation.

The future of public relations may therefore lie not in managing stories, but in building the patterns from which understanding itself is formed.

The writer is a communications professional with 45 years of experience. He has worked as a correspondent on the frontlines during the war years in Sri Lanka and has been a reporter on the news and investigation desks of several English newspapers. He was a Business Editor and Deputy Editor for two national newspapers and has experience working with international news teams from CNN, German Television (ARD), and Deutsche Welle (DW) in Sri Lanka. Devotta was also the News Director for a leading private media organisation for eight years, managing a trilingual newsroom that delivered news to three television channels and four radio stations. Fluent in English, Sinhala, and Tamil, he is currently a columnist for Daily FT and a Public Affairs consultant. Last but not least he is an old Peterite!