A pair of PR trade organizations has released a new AI ethics guide for industry pros integrating the tech into their organizations for the first time.
It’s a timely drop, given PR agencies are increasingly using AI to auto-generate press releases, articles and similar content.
“Understanding ethics is hard enough,” says Anne Gregory.
She’s a professor of corporate communications at University of Huddersfield who helped put the guide together.
“Understanding the potential pitfalls and ethical challenges of AI makes it even harder,” Gregory adds.
The guide includes a helpful decision tree that PR pros can use to test-drive any AI tool or strategy they’re considering at their agencies.
Dubbed “Ethics Guide to Artificial Intelligence in PR,” the handbook was jointly produced by the U.K.’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Canadian Public Relations Society.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*Opinion: AI and PR an Unholy Mix: While a number of PR pros have embraced AI, Marc Macias is not among them.
He’s founder of Macias PR.
Macias’ take: PR demands too much instinct, intuition, subtlety and creativity to be outsourced to a mere machine – no matter how smart.
Observes Macias: “If the most experienced publicists have trouble identifying the right coverage for the right market, imagine how much more difficult it will be for machine learning to conceptualize this strategy from scratch.
“And without any big, quality data, it’s no different than blindly throwing darts at the board and seeing what sticks.”
*AI: For PR Pros, Data in Seconds – Not Weeks: New AI tools are often able to surface trends in nearly an instant – an exercise that could take weeks with conventional tools, according to Matt Brown.
He’s president, Americas & Asia-Pacific, at Signal A.
Case in point: Brown says Adidas was able to use AI to measure how its brand squared with the Black Lives Matter movement over the course of a month – in just a few seconds.
*’AI Jesus’ Spews Doomsday Prophecies: An AI auto-text generator trained by ingesting the King James Bible has begun spinning doomsday prophecies.
A sample warning reads, “That thou shouldest take him a great multitude of people, and the spoil of the wicked shall be the same things that are in the midst of the sea; and the sea shall be the father of the devils.”
Full disclosure: AI Jesus’ creator George Davila Durendal, CEO at Saviors.AI, says he goosed the tool to go negative by prompting it with the keywords “The Plague,” “The End of Days” and Ceasar.
*GPT-3 and the Law: Promise and Then Some: Rudy DeFelice is jazzed about the potential that GPT-3 – an extremely powerful AI writing tool — appears to offer to attorneys and law firms.
He’s CEO of KP Labs, a tech consulting firm.
“GPT-3 isn’t just finding stuff for you,” DeFelice observes. “GPT-3 is making stuff for you.”
Specific applications DeFelice believes GPT-3 can be fine-tuned for include:
*Enabling non-legal corporate employees to more easily communicate their needs to corporate counsel
*Creating first draft legal documents
“One can imagine GPT-3 being part of the process that creates initial drafts of legal memoranda, contracts, policy manuals, HR documents, RFP’s and audit responses — among other things commonly created” by corporate counsel, DeFelice observes.
For a deeper look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.
*Opinion: GPT-3 and Writers’ Jobs: Safe for Now: In the face of fears that auto-writer GPT-3 may steal jobs from writers, Ben Dickson is sanguine.
He’s a writer for BD Tech Talks.
Observes Dickson: “I think GPT-3 will have a role in writing. Give it a query and it will find something relevant in the terabytes of data it has analyzed.
“That can help you find new directions for your writing, and it is how AI is being used in other fields.
“But for the time being, the human creative process will be beyond GPT-3 or its successor(s).
“Some might argue that the same was said for chess and Go.
“But both proved to be problems that could be solved through brute-force math.
“They might be right, but language is perhaps the most complicated function of the human mind and probably one of the last areas AI will conquer.”
*Opinion: Steer Clear of Article Spinners: Content managers should avoid writing tools that claim to be AI – but really only reword articles that have been already published, according to Stephen Jeske.
He’s senior content strategist at Market Muse, an AI-generated writing firm.
“It’s one of those old SEO tactics — like automated backlinking — used for less-than-legitimate (blackhat) purposes,” Jeske observes.
“If you’re wondering whether the Worldwide Web really needs more of this content, the answer is no,” Jeske adds.
*A Sardonic View of AI-Generated Writing: Despite its prowess, AI writing still has a few things to sort out before delivering on its promise, according to Matt Hamblen.
He’s editor of Fierce Electronics.
Observes Hamlen: “AI is getting, yes, more creative.
“This capability will streamline the busy-work jobs that allow workers to focus on higher-level tasks.
“We and our children will all be doing more dignified and intellectually-challenging work in the future, thanks to AI — and doing it ever-more creatively.
“We still have to figure out how people will be paid, of course.”
*Prototype AI Tool Auto-Generates Emails From a Few Words: Magic Email – a prototype app designed to generate a full-blown email from just one line of text – has popped-up on the Web.
Using auto-text generator GPT-3 as its engine, the tool is also capable of summarizing articles.
*AI Writing Assistants: Not Everyone’s a Fan: Adored by untold numbers of writers, AI writing assistants still trigger ire in the hearts of a few.
Their complaint: Automated editing for grammar and style can be a creativity killer.
Ryan Fan, the writer of this piece, counts himself among the non-plussed.
*Special Feature: Company Reports That Write Themselves
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.