Pinstone’s first ever comms learning and networking event explored and challenged the topic ‘is AI, a friend or foe’ with a panel of experts to help advise those working in the communications and marketing industry.
In this blog we share what our guest speakers and panellists learned on the day.
Approach with considered confidence
Ben Briggs, Group publisher and editor-in-chief at Agriconnect (publisher of Farmers Guardian) shared his views on our panel discussion and examined why getting to the truth via good journalism is more important than ever in an era of fake news and scepticism.
His advice to other communications experts was to explore AI across the business.
“A top tip for me from today’s event would be to set up an AI working group in your business. Get people together with different roles and different skillsets to look at how it applies to their roles; if you do it in isolation you might get a pre-set judgement on it.
“It might also take the fear factor away – it’s not going to put everyone out of business – it can actually help people in their roles, but the advice is to discuss it together and see where it takes us,” he said.
Ensure credibility and trustworthiness
Ben Verinder, CIPR fellow and managing director of Chalkstream shared what he learned about good practice within teams to move forward with AI.
His recommendations to other communications practitioners were to: “Start thinking about developing your own policies, looking at existing policies that agencies have created. I would be thinking about ethical guidance, for example, the CIPR have a code of practice.
“Do your research, understand the risks and borrow from the good practice that other people are doing,” advises Ben.
Explore the benefits for your business
Hamzah Malik, Founder of Vet Pulse, the AI-powered vet’s assistant and founder of Regent Branding, an award-winning digital consultancy, shared what he gleaned from the day.
“I was really interested in how AI is becoming mainstream, hearing about privacy policies, AI policies and the scale at which it is being adopted.”
His advice on adopting AI in their communications strategies was: “If anyone wants to know more about using AI, jump into it., start using it, play around with it – don’t be afraid.”
Streamline repetitive or manual tasks
Catherine Brien, a consumer digital and data science expert at management consultancy firm Alix Partners answered the question of whether or not AI can be friend or foe.
“I think the consensus across the panel quite unanimously was that AI has the potential to be a tremendous friend, with huge benefits for people, society, businesses and the environment.
“We know it can’t replace humans, but it will make it easier for humans to achieve what they want to, for example it can replace a lot of manual repetitive tasks such as data matching.”
What do communications professionals need to know about using AI?
Stephen Waddington, a former CIPR President, also shared advice at the event from his perspective at Wadds Inc – a professional advisory business for comms agencies – in a pre-recorded interview with Pinstone digital strategist Ben Feltwell.
Contact Pinstone
If you would like to know more about Pinstone’s use of AI or further information, please email info@pinstone.co.uk
