Key Takeaways
- Media and communications careers are experiencing major shifts in processes and operations due to AI input. These include changes to data intake, customer and client relationships, process standards, and more functions and expectations.
- These professionals can incorporate AI use into their workflows through the right channels, along with receiving an education that will establish a foundation for advancing this skillset and related ones for their respective fields.
- While the use of AI has several pros, like reducing expenses and greater speed, maintaining full awareness of AI offerings will help with integration from an accurate perspective.
- AI can help optimize many facets of internal and external communications, including collaboration, communication, data, and virtual assistants.
- Creativity-forward careers, like PR roles or content writing, are expected to continue evolving as AI use increases.
- The combination of a proficient skillset and relevant education can provide a strong foundation that allows for AI enhancement.
AI in Communication: How Technology is Changing Media Careers
Few industries demand evolution from its creators like media and communications professionals. As tools and technologies adapt and evolve, so do the people that use them. Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to explode in its capabilities, and services like ChatGPT and Claude remain popular tools for tasks ranging from organic creation to simple duties.
Since the climate of technology is leaning heavily into the AI industry, media careers are molding their workflows to fit these new cultural demands. Here, we discuss the core definitions of AI content creation and examine its impacts on media and communications careers while examining education and skills needed for professionals in this field.
What Is AI Content Creation?
Understanding the power of AI means knowing its capabilities in the creative space. When it comes to AI in communications, a major focus is on content creation, a term that holds many definitions across platforms and services. Upwork discusses AI content creation as the process of “using artificial intelligence to produce written, visual, and audio content through sophisticated language processing systems.” These systems, often referred to as large learning models or LLMs, source pertinent information from across the Internet to generate an answer or materials to suit the user’s needs.
How Is AI Used to Create Content?
AI may be used to create written content, visual tools, and other digital assets, both partially or in their entirety. These assets can include blog posts, articles, case studies, social media videos, infographics, emails, spreadsheets, and many other materials.
Alongside procurement, IBM notes that AI functions may support the generation of content in the form of:
- Fact checking: While not perfect, a sweep for accuracy with the help of AI can bring small errors in content to the surface, along with improvement and replacement suggestions.
- Editing services: Generative tools may also help with minor editing tasks, and when prompted, tools can replace or improve elements in written copy, photos, and videos.
- Quality control: Asking AI to run checks for proper grammar, mechanics, punctuation, spelling, and other elements of content can improve the quality. In addition, AI can reshape visual assets with the proper features and ensure the materials are compliant with the appropriate standards.
- Optimizing metadata and other components: For headline suggestions and basic SEO elements, AI can use recent and relevant data to produce content that will drive results.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Using AI To Create Content?
Regardless of personal opinion, AI has varying degrees of usefulness that depend on the user and their cleverness. According to Tech Target, the pros and cons of AI usage stretch from simple usage matters to larger-scale, habitual dependencies.
Pros of AI usage can entail the following:
- AI content is constantly improving: Users can train AI to deliver more personalized content across mediums, like social media copy and email campaigns, to suit their needs.
- Using AI can reduce costs and expenses: Beyond human input, AI can minimize and eliminate the use of organizational software or collaborative programs, meaning fewer membership fees and seats for employees.
- AI yields stronger SEO content: Because AI crawls an insurmountable number of resources, the quality and thoroughness of SEO implementation can supersede human efforts in select areas.
- Greater speed: A thorough prompt can produce content more quickly than human efforts for the same tasks. This also allows for content to scale at a rapid pace.
- Inspiration: If nothing else, an AI assisting through a thoughtful prompt or suggestion request might spark creative thought if any is lacking.
However, these perks are not without negatives. Some cons of AI usage can include:
- A lack of nuance: While AI maintains usefulness across clear-cut administrative duties, several LLMs can fall short in the creative department, often producing content that might be recycled from existing brands or sources.
- Algorithm disadvantages: Search engines tend to favor original content over select AI-generated assets, meaning that mass-producing content or overuse can have negative effects.
- Overreliance: A risk of dependence on the instant gratification AI answers deliver may detract from workflow or lose efficiency over time.
- Unable to innovate: Since the foundation of intelligence cannot generate organic ideas, to stand out, companies must continue to tap into human innovation to set trends and produce content to train future generative AI chatbots.
- Bias: AI training can hold semantic history, meaning that answers can hold a preference towards opinions that are not objective, and can produce errors from inadequate prompting or a lack of context.
- AI makes errors: AI is not perfect and is known to make errors.
- Using AI in school can be considered cheating: It is important to know how you can and cannot use AI for your coursework so you do not get accused of cheating or plagiarism.
How Is AI Impacting Communications?
Standardizing the consumer experience, along with internal operations, remains a priority for organizations that use media services for growth. A combination of revolutionizing workflows and strengthening operations through AI use continues to change the requirements for human personnel. Therefore, the trajectory of career growth continues to shift, as outlets and companies work to fortify their current workforces with emerging AI tools and services.
How Is AI Transforming Communication?
AI holds the capabilities to optimize several forms of production far beyond content creation and generative production. When harnessed across departments, the potential for boosted channels of productivity and synergy stems from thoughtful automated contributions. New Horizons notes that AI can help optimize many facets of internal and external communications, including:
- Collaboration: Meetings and correspondence benefit from AI enhancements. Automated transcripts from Zoom or Microsoft Teams maintain accountability and accuracy. When interacting with customers or clients, an AI interface may be able to expedite queries or tasks.
- Communication: AI summaries can extrapolate highlights from lengthy emails and documents to save time and provide clarity. From the standpoint of customer interaction, AI in communication can mean tailoring email campaign content and product targeting to push for increased conversions.
- Data: Continued use means that AI data crawlers can manage metrics related to campaign results, customer insights, and other outcomes. A well-trained AI might even be able to offer suggestions for next steps or improvements, based on the data at hand.
- Virtual assistants: Scheduling responsibilities and calendar help remain efficient uses for AI tools, as they take the stress out of managing individual and team schedules.
How Can Media and Communication Professionals Adapt to AI?
When media and communication professionals elect to integrate AI into their work environment — or it becomes a requirement — they are best served to treat its offerings as tools for success, not as replacements for their core tasks. Adapting means incorporating, and workers and experts can achieve this feat by:
- Identifying automations to eliminate small tasks: For duties that might require minute work, such as data entry, inquire about AI’s usefulness for taking minutiae off an individual or team’s plate.
- Leveraging AI for ideation: In the early stages of content creation, asking an AI chatbot for brainstorming help or outlining can expedite drafting. Plus, these tools can absorb existing materials, such as audio transcripts and videos, and reimagine them to satisfy requirements.
- Producing rough drafts: Using subsequent knowledge, an AI tool can create a first draft almost instantaneously, which then invites human intervention to provide necessary detail and accuracy checks as needed.
What Is the Future of Media Careers in the AI Landscape?
Media careers will continue to maintain importance in communications and related fields. Understanding that the essence of media, through storytelling, investigative curiosity, and other human elements, will support AI use as the heart of the operations. Creativity-forward careers that may rely on AI usage to varying degrees can include:
- Public relations manager: A public relations manager works to maintain a positive image and quality reputation for clients, or large corporations with several other PR professionals. Their responsibilities also extend to internal communications, and PR managers may collaborate with other management roles to create reports and handle scheduling.
- Public relations specialist: Similar to a manager role, a public relations specialist acts as the mouthpiece for a client or organization. This role is also referred to as a communications specialist and is responsible for writing press releases, delivering public announcements, handling relationships, and managing social media engagement.
- Web content writer: To create the foundation for both AI and human writers to operate on, writers specializing in web content focus on crafting words that sell to customers and entice readers to engage with a company or brand. Web content writers may also be required to maintain a knowledge of content management systems and associated software to perform job functions.
For more information regarding careers in communications, consult the BLS handbook.
Education Around Media and AI
To continue adapting to this ever-changing landscape of AI tools and technologies, a certain amount of literacy is expected for media professionals. By fortifying oneself with the right education and skill sets, a media professional will be able to navigate constant change and thrive through it all.
Those seeking roles in communication may wish to expand their education through a degree in communication studies. According to the BLS handbook, a bachelor’s degree is a prerequisite for most roles and specializations in this field.
In addition, acquiring a relevant skill set will boost credibility and encourage expansion in potential opportunities, along with aggregating future career skills. According to Indeed, a communications professional might showcase expertise in areas such as:
- Project management skills: Whether a media professional oversees one entity or several, the ability to manage several projects, with AI assistance or without, is paramount to career success.
- Communication skills: While this might seem obvious, the parameters of effective communication extend far beyond simply talking to people.
- Public relations: The main objective here is to increase public awareness of a brand or company through outreach and material distribution.
- Interpersonal skills: Along with internal cohorts, communications experts could interact with marketing and advertising personnel.
- Multimedia skills: AI can assist in areas where a media professional might need additional assistance, such as graphic design or video editing.
The combination of a proficient skill set and relevant education can set a strong foundation that allows for AI enhancement.
What Media Professionals Should Know About AI
While the discourse around AI suggests a major impact on the workforce, AI cannot fully replace human efforts. Facts and opinions materialize outside of prompts, and the purpose of AI is to optimize material and make it work for consumption and optimization. The United Nations discusses that, while the possibility for spreading misinformation and error is always present, the potential for advancement through data-driven information gathering and consumer retention can skyrocket journalistic and media efforts. In short, maintaining full awareness of AI offerings will help with integration from an accurate perspective.
Overview: AI and Technology in Media Careers
An exciting and vast future awaits media professionals across their respective areas of focus, and the likelihood of an AI presence to accommodate many needs is strong. AI in communications holds promise in the arena of productivity, where intuitive services can eliminate needless administrative tasks, to completely reshaping the processes of relationships between clients and professionals. The future of media careers looks optimized and expansive, and when the humans taking advantage of AI approach its possibilities with clear intentions and boundaries, their potential can skyrocket.
Interested in a career in communications or learning more about AI? Contact an advisor to discuss our degree programs and offerings, including our Artificial Intelligence emphasis.