For Immediate Release

It has been 12 years since Google shut down Google Reader, its popular RSS news reader. The rise of social media newsfeeds had rendered RSS useless for many people, and declining usage led Google to sunset it.

But RSS feeds never went away. Many websites still make them available; they’re baked into most blogging utilities; and podcasting relies heavily on RSS feeds for distribution of audio and video files.

As algorithms determine what you see in social networks, and newsletter subscriptions require visits to your inbox, where your newsletters are mixed in with all your other emails, RSS news readers are making a comeback. New news readers are emerging, and older ones are making improvements with a range of features, including the incorporation of AI to assist with sorting and other tasks.

In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel explore the benefits of RSS, examine some of the features of the latest crop of readers, and discuss how an RSS resurgence can benefit communicators.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, August 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:01)

@nevillehobson (00:09)

filtered through engagement metrics and interrupted by endless distractions. Many people have never even heard of RSS and those who do often assume it’s long gone. But here’s the twist, it never went away. And according to writer and technologist Molly White, best known for her clear-eyed critiques of Web3 and crypto hype, RSS may be due for a comeback. We’ll take a look at this right after this message.

In a recent long form post titled Curate Your Own Newspaper with RSS, Molly makes the case for reclaiming this overlooked piece of internet plumbing. It’s part how-to guide, part manifesto. She walks through setting up a modern feed reader, finding hidden RSS feeds, and building a curated stream of blogs, news and newsletters that reflect your actual interests, not what some platform thinks will keep you scrolling. She even shares how she structures her own reading habits.

offering a kind of digital self-care routine for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the flood of content today. Reading it, I was struck by how radical RSS now feels, not because it’s new, but because it puts the user back in charge. It reminded me of the early blogosphere when independent voices flourished and content was shared freely through syndication. That original spirit of openness and autonomy is still there, waiting to be rediscovered. People are talking about an RSS comeback.

driven by digital fatigue and a yearning for direct ad-free content. The Reddit RSS subreddit remains active, with users debating RSS’s survival and sharing workarounds where publishers drop support. Worries persist, though, especially about publishers de-prioritizing RSS or hiding feeds. And tech ecosystems like podcasting and the Fediverse continue to depend on feed standards.

In a world increasingly centralized, RSS is decentralized. In a world designed to grab attention, it respects your time. And in the world of world gardens, keeps the door open. And here’s a great comment on Hacker News. We’ve been fed algorithmic garbage for so long, people are rediscovering how good a hand-picked feed of trusted sources can feel. So here’s a question for us to explore. What role could RSS play in communication today?

Could it help rebuild trust in a media environment dominated by algorithms? Could communicators use it to deliver information more transparently or to reconnect with audiences looking for more intentional, less manipulative content? And for internal communication, other ways to syndicate updates, insights, or thought leadership that sidestep the noisy channels employees often tune out. That’s one for you, Cheryl.

Shel Holtz (03:26)

@nevillehobson (03:44)

Shel Holtz (03:55)

know, RSS typically just shows you the newest articles from your favorite sources and the order they were published. But now researchers and developers are combining RSS and large language models to help you discover the most relevant content in your feed without losing that control and privacy that makes RSS appealing in the first place. So instead of having to scroll endlessly through everything, your reader might highlight just a few items most relevant to your interests.

even if you’re new and haven’t given it much to go on. Another interesting development is what’s called content enrichment. Some of the new RSS readers are going beyond the bare minimum that RSS feeds typically deliver, which is a headline, link, and maybe a short blurb. Now, AI can step in and fill in the gaps. It can pull in the complete article text. It can pull in images. It can categorize topics. It can even write summaries for you.

So your RSS reader can give you something that looks and feels a lot more like a personalized news briefing. So these advances, I think, are really turning it into a more modern, intelligent way to stay informed on your terms without the algorithms. So if people can discover these new RSS news readers that really go…

beyond what we were accustomed to with the readers. mean, even thinking of ⁓ the Google News reader, the late lamented ⁓ Google News reader, which a lot of people said was going to kill RSS. Of course, that’s silly. RSS drives podcasting. So it’s not going anywhere. It really is plumbing. And I also found one site called RSS.app. Have you seen this? Yeah, I think it’s great. There are people who are worried

that the feeds are going away, that sites that offer them are going to stop offering them for one reason or another. But RSS app lets you create a feed for any site that’s publicly available. So if you want to add it to your news reader and it doesn’t have a news feed, RSS.app will fix that for you and give you an RSS feed from that site. So Edge and Chrome let you follow.

RSS feeds, ⁓ readers are evolving. I’m hopeful that this can just come back from the dead in a new, more modern iteration that solves a lot of problems for people.

@nevillehobson (06:58)

we were all talking about RSS. it was kind of like ⁓ it’s a jargony word. It’s very tech oriented and trying to explain to people. I remember conversations a lot ⁓ to look at the, you know, there’s no single definition of what the letters stand for. Really simple syndication was the one that stuck out. I would suggest if anyone listening doesn’t know what it go to Wikipedia and look it up on RSS. The page is

not well written, it’ll tell you what it is. Today, ⁓ most people who ⁓ I would argue most is the right word, haven’t heard of RSS, what they do, they could care less what it is. But you mentioned something which I think is quite significant, which is indeed what Molly White mentioned, the internet plumbing. This is part of the plumbing. Newsletters.

podcasts, videos, you name it, that people subscribe to. They get it in their feed, in their ⁓ player on their mobile phone or whatever it is. RSS plays a big role in getting that content to them. So the interesting thing to me, certainly, is that we don’t talk about RSS. Yeah, it’s there. It’s the plumbing, like electricity. So I found it interesting what you said about AI, because therein, to me, lies the key to this.

which is that ⁓ we aren’t going to talk or sell the idea to anyone about AI is going to sort out your RSS fee. No, no, no, no. AI is going to be part of the solution getting you the content you want when you want it or however you happen to what you want to do with it, distribute it or whatever it is. And don’t worry about what it’s called. And that’s where we didn’t go the right way with all this back in the original days because people got so wrapped up in the tech.

that the glazed eye syndrome was huge in organization. We tried to explain to them, hey, we should do RSS. mean, no one’s going to say that now. But that could well be the route for this. ⁓ Although I’m just thinking, what is the unique thing about this? You mentioned, I mean, the tech concept of RSS in how it enables things like enclosures, which is the MP3 file for a podcast, instance.

How would that work, I wonder? Is there anything that would need to be changed in how it does what it does if AI is playing a role? I can’t see how that would be changed because it’s not changing the technology per se. It’s actually automating the process for you. Is that the route? Molly doesn’t mention that in a big way in her article, but this I think is worth exploring. What role could RSS play in communication today?

And maybe that’s not the right question, actually. Maybe that’s not it. ⁓ Does it offer something today? And this is a question. I don’t have the answer to this. That anything else that’s in use today to deliver content to people can’t do as well as RSS can. I don’t know the answer to that, but I doubt that would be the case. So I stopped using a dedicated RSS reader a long time ago because ⁓ I’ve actually switched largely.

to subscribing to content I like by newsletter more than any other means. So I used to use a really good reader called InnoReader, which has a free version and a paid one. I used a paid one for some years, but it then got for me, certainly, a little too much, too much, too many bells and whistles. All I wanted was something quite simple. I’ve got that now, for instance, with ⁓ Raindrop, which is the replacement to Pocket.

the read it later tool really, really useful. I find raindrop make sure I got the name right. It is raindrop, isn’t it? Yeah, raindrop.io. Excellent. They’ve got a free version and a paid version. And I’m on the free because I don’t need the page because the features on free are really, really good. You can use it adding as much or as little as you want. You can tag it, you can add descriptions, you can categorize it.

I don’t do any of that because I have literally a handful of tags I use for everything I save there. And it’s really, really good. It got me thinking, how does that deliver the content? I bet you RSS is in there somewhere. So there are tools around if you want to think about subscribing in that kind of manual way and it’s using RSS. I’m not sure that’s how we should as communicators be pitching this idea to anyone. So ⁓ yeah, so the idea of AI.

Shel Holtz (12:06)

@nevillehobson (12:10)

Shel Holtz (12:34)

@nevillehobson (12:39)

Shel Holtz (12:58)

start talking about it as this alternative to scrolling through social media where I’m being controlled by the algorithm and being manipulated to doom scroll and stay on their platform as opposed to seeing content that I really want to see because I subscribe to it. So I think that’s the challenge. ⁓ It’s not like there’s no feeds out there. There are plenty of sites to still maintain feeds. Even in the U.S. government, I was reading that NASA

@nevillehobson (13:46)

Shel Holtz (13:56)

somebody really enticing the public to start using this as a way to get the content that they’re interested in and not mention what the technology is or how it works. Because if people had, and I use this analogy way too often,

But if everybody had to know what the name of everything that makes their cargo was and how it works, nobody get in their cars. We don’t need that understanding of the technology in order to drive from point A to point B.

@nevillehobson (14:58)

I agree. I’m not sure myself that this is even the right argument to be discussing about should we, know, is RSS going to have a comeback? In the sense of how Molly White writes her long form article, that’s very much geared to ⁓ the folks who want to know about the technology per se. Normal people don’t want to do that.

not being disparaging here. That’s a reality. So maybe the route to explore thinking of this now from the communicator’s point of view, whether it’s internal or external matter, is not about how do we bring RSS back and what role could RSS play. That’s not the key argument. That’s part of the secondary argument once you’ve defined the role that you want whatever the technology you’re to use to help you achieve the goal you’ve set.

That to me is very much in the area of an artificial intelligence agent to do that. I haven’t really started experimenting with agents, mainly because most of the tools that offer them are only literally now become, you can start using them here in the UK. So, ChatGPT’s agents just become available in the last couple of weeks. I’ve got it in my thing. I’ve just not had time to do anything with it yet, other than read up about it. But I’m wondering, I might do an experiment.

mainly to help me decide is this worth spending any time on which is to tell it to create something where RSS plays a role and see what it does. Don’t know how I’m going to do that yet but I’ll get to it.

Shel Holtz (16:39)

@nevillehobson (16:43)

It has, yeah.

Shel Holtz (17:05)

and then create a spreadsheet that categorizes these podcasts based on industry or market and include in the spreadsheet the name of the podcast, its URL, which focus it has, and what information they were able to extract on pitching guests. And I just sat back and watched while it did all of this. It stopped and asked me a question once.

I don’t remember what question, but once it asked me a question and then it went off on its merry way until there was a spreadsheet with about 25 podcasts listed on it. That would have taken an intern two days.

@nevillehobson (18:08)

And I think that’s the right question to be asking.

Shel Holtz (18:39)

pitching a particular reader to people because it benefits your content in a good way. ⁓ Just keep an eye on it because there seems to be something happening here. Neville, when you shared on our Slack channel that this was the topic for the day, I went and did some search on new developments in RSS. And there’s a ton. There is a ton of material out there on this. So something is afoot.

@nevillehobson (19:35)

Shel Holtz (19:55)

The post FIR #475: Algorithms Got You Down? Get Retro with RSS! appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

“Artificial intelligence will not save us. But it might help us understand who we are.” – Monsignor Paul Tighe

In one of our most thought-provoking FIR Interviews to date, we speak with Monsignor Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Section of Culture of the Dicastery for Culture and Education at The Vatican, about the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and the role of the Church in shaping global conversations around technology.

As AI continues its rapid development and deployment across all sectors of society, the question of how we use it – and why – has never been more important. From concerns about algorithmic dehumanisation to the challenge of building ethical cultures inside corporations, Msgr. Tighe brings a unique voice of moral clarity and practical insight to the discussion.

In this wide-ranging conversation with FIR co-hosts Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, and guest co-host Silvia Cambié, Msgr. Tighe addresses:

From practical reflections on professional identity and solidarity to broader insights on how we can avoid becoming de-skilled or ethically numb in a machine-paced world, Msgr Tighe offers a balanced view: not alarmist, but clear-eyed about both risks and opportunities.

He reminds us that technology reflects the mindset of its makers – and that responsibility must remain human.

“We must not become blindly dependent on technology. We must cultivate the wisdom of the heart.”

For communicators, business leaders, technologists, and policymakers alike, this interview is a compelling call to think more deeply – and act more responsibly – in shaping the future of AI. The conversation offers rare insight into how values like dignity, trust, and ethical discernment can and must coexist with innovation.

Whether you’re navigating the rollout of AI in your organisation or simply grappling with its broader societal implications, this is a conversation worth hearing – and sharing.

Listen now, read the transcript (below) or watch the video version, and be part of a vital global dialogue.

A native of Navan, County Meath in the Republic of Ireland, Monsignor Paul Tighe was ordained a priest of the Dublin Diocese in 1983. After post-graduate studies in Rome, he was appointed as a lecturer in Moral Theology in the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, where he was appointed head of the Theology department in 2000.

In 2007, he was appointed as Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. In that capacity, he was involved in promoting Church reflection on the importance of digital culture and in the launch of some of the social media initiatives of the Holy See.

In 2015, he was nominated to the Pontifical Council for Culture and as titular Bishop of Drivastum. At the Council, he followed questions related to digital culture and technology.

In October 2022, he was appointed as Secretary of the newly established Dicastery for Culture and Education, where he has particular responsibility for the Culture section. In January 2025, that Dicastery, together with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, published ‘ANTIQUA ET NOVA: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence.’

Paul Tighe Wikipedia entry

Links from this Interview:

Based on the audio recording of the FIR Interview recorded on 22 July 2025. Lightly edited for clarity and syntax, and formatted for the reader experience.

Neville Hobson

As artificial intelligence transforms society, who speaks for humanity? In this FIR interview, The Vatican’s Monsignor Paul Tighe shares why the Church is stepping forward in the global tech debate, exploring how dignity and ethical responsibility must lead the way.

V/o and intro music

This is For Immediate Release, the podcast for communicators.

Shel Holtz

Welcome everyone to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz in the US and I’m joined today by my co-host Neville Hobson in the UK and our guest co-host Silvia Cambié in Italy. And I’m very pleased to welcome our interview guest Monsignor Paul Tighe, who is secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education at The Vatican, responsible for the Culture section.

In January of this year, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, along with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, published Antiqua et Nova, a “Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence.” Given our interest in AI on FIR, we’ve been intrigued by and even reported on both Pope Francis’ and now Pope Leo’s focus on AI and humanity.

Monsignor, we’re very pleased to welcome you to FIR. Thank you for joining us.

Paul Tighe

Thank you. I’m very happy to be with you and I look forward to our conversation.

Shel Holtz

I wonder if you might share with us, before we jump into artificial intelligence, a little bit of your background.

Paul Tighe

My own background, originally, 100 years ago, I studied law in Ireland, civil law, subsequently studied theology here in Rome, and eventually ended up teaching a kind of combination in the field of ethics, the relationship between law and morality and public policy and those issues.

When I came to work in Rome about 20 years ago, more or less, I worked in the communications department where we were working on the integration of digital technologies into the Holy See. And what really began to fascinate me at that stage was how digital technologies were really impacting culture in general, how we behave as individuals, how we form community, how we learn from each other, how we communicate, how every aspect of life has been transformed.

And I think that led me into the area of reflecting on AI as something that has an extraordinary potential to impact how we as human beings live as individuals and in community.

Silvia Cambié

I think we can get started then with a few questions we have, Monsignor Tighe. And if I may, on the first end, I would like to refer to Antiqua et Nova. And in it, the Church highlights some dimensions of human intelligence, the relational dimension, the spiritual dimension, the embodied dimension.

There is, however, a school of thought out there which says that that artificial intelligence is helping us to truly understand what makes us human. Because artificial intelligence helps us with repetitive tasks, with pedestrian tasks, it actually gives us the time to focus on different abilities that we have as humans, like spiritual self-respect, empathy, insight.

What do you say to that?

Paul Tighe

Yeah, I mean, undoubtedly AI has the potential to facilitate a lot of human reflection and human thought. It’s interesting, one of the earlier terms that was used before artificial intelligence really won the round was to talk about augmented intelligence. AI is something that we can work with, that we can use to increase our own capacities, to expand our own capacities in certain fields. But I think the limitation would be is that those fields are of necessity somewhat limited.

One of the things that we were very interested in questioning and maybe it’s AI that has forced us to think about this is what do we mean by intelligence? What is it that we really qualify as a human intelligence?

AI is extraordinarily good at certain types of tasks to which we would give the title intelligence, calculation, analysis, pattern spotting, processing of more and more data, extraordinarily capable in those arenas.

But there are other issues that I think are questions for human intelligence, too, which are the questions, well, what should we do with these new potentials, with these new capacities, and how do we ensure that they actually serve the true good of human beings? And that’s a type of intelligence, I think, that we still have to maintain a certain agency over and a certain responsibility for.

Shel Holtz

Monsignor, The Vatican has warned that while AI systems are able to make decisions – and I’ve seen research that says particularly among Gen Z – a lot of people are turning to AI to make day-to-day decisions for them that they used to have to make for themselves. These AI systems don’t bear any moral responsibility. That’s on us.

Now, just this week, OpenAI has released ChatGPT Agents. We have seen some early agents, but now anybody can, if they have the right account, and more accounts are going to be coming online soon for OpenAI’s customers and even free users, able to use agents that I just read Ethan Mollick today saying, really for the first time, does that analogy of an intern working beside you feel apt?

With this coming, and I know that one of the things I’ve been focused on is how managers are going to need to help their employees through this transition to an age where we’re working alongside AI employees. For what it’s worth, that’s basically what they’re going to be.

What do you think are the implications of this in terms of the dignity of workers and the humanity of work?

Paul Tighe

Yeah, I think there’s a whole range of issues you’ve raised there, you know, and the idea that people might hand over decision making to some sort of an AI program, even relating to personal questions. You know, I hope they would be vigilant about the kind of replies that we’re going to get.

And I think we also have to recognize in the past, people might have been going to fortune tellers or to horoscopes looking for advice on how to spend their lives. So one has to be recognized.

I mean, there are certain tasks which I think you would ask an AI platform to undertake. There are certain types of scoping exercises you might ask them to work on. But I think one of the things one has to be able to retain is something of your capacity to recognize, to be able to critically engage with the results you’re getting, to understand those results. And even at times to have an intuition that this may be something that’s somehow not in the right line or is a hallucination of some sort or other.

So I think of… for example, I belong to a generation that grew up with the very first calculators that could do speedy mathematics. And as we were coming to our final examinations at school, one of the issues, could you bring the calculator into the exam with you? And one of the things people said was you needed to keep your own certain numeracy and ability with numeracy that you could spot a gross error at least immediately.

And I think that’s one of things that we need to keep a sense of tuning our own capacities, not becoming de-skilled. My worry would be we would become de-skilled and we’d become blindly attentive or dependent on a technology.

I mean, another analogy I would choose sometimes is I think we’ve all got a little lazy about using GPS systems and different navigation systems as we drive; when they don’t work or when we suddenly find ourselves without a signal, sometimes we find some of our abilities have been lost.

That ability to navigate, to to map read, to find our way around, I use that as an analogy for life. We have to keep that, our own ability to ask the right questions and to know what are more likely to be the dependable capital questions.

I think the area of obviously the introductions of having an intern working beside you in the form of a platform. That’s another issue though, but it’s an issue that will become important about the impact of that on how people work and on the amount of jobs that may or may not be available in the future and how we think about issues about that.

Silvia Cambié

I have another question about Antiqua et Nova, and in it there is a very powerful observation about the fact that AI often forces workers to adjust to the pace and demands of machines rather than machines having to adjust to the needs of humans. And when I read that, that really resonated with me.

I’ve worked in managed services throughout my career, so I know the pain of having to adjust to that pace and the anxiety. So I would like to ask you, what do you think societies and employers can do to make sure that AI respects the needs of workers, particularly those workers in vulnerable and outsourced roles in the Global South?

Paul Tighe

Yeah, I think that you’ve hit a hugely important issues. One of the things I think when we think about AI, we have to think about AI as something that will be an accelerator and a multiplier of existing practices. And one of the things we have to recognize, there are many contexts in which human work is not valued, in which the dignity of workers is already not valued.

And the risk is that AI in certain ways could exacerbate that, where people will see AI as something that can displace workers, that can work all hours. This is becoming some… as you know, there’s been some talk about unshoring employment into the first world again. But a lot of that unshoring is likely to be handed to machines rather than human beings.

And we’ve already seen anecdotally and in literary examples I’ve been reading about, something about workers in an Amazon warehouse, or in any warehouse you care to mention, where there are logistical processes that have been directed by algorithmic concerns and that somehow the humanity of the worker is lost.

There was an extraordinary article in the New Yorker magazine or the New York magazine looking at food delivery operators in New York who essentially are driven into competition with each other by an algorithm that will give work to those who are the speediest in their delivery tasks. And therefore dehumanizing and also creating competition between people who might previously have been seen as working together.

So I think we need to reflect and to be not complacent about how this could impact. At another level, there are ways in which it may displace certain types of work that are already meaningless, and maybe less than worthy of human dignity.

So I think it’s in the balance, my worry would be, and this is a thing that Pope Francis often brought out: it’s not just about the technology that’s there and it can be used for good or it could be used for bad. It’s that the technology is born out of a certain mentality.

And if the mentality, the commercial mindset that is giving birth to the technology has at its heart exclusively values about efficiency and profitability, then the chances are that the dignity and worth of individuals will not be respected.

Whether you blame that on the AI or on the commercial mentality is probably we need to be careful not to do that.

The other example, if I may, that struck me because we talked, it links with something Shel said earlier, which is the one is like people are saying AI can liberate us from some of the more menial or less important tasks and allow us to come in at the specifically human level.

And an example of that was in the field of medicine where AIs and AI platforms will be able to process enormous amount of diagnostic materials, do comparisons with other X-rays, prescribe individual drug regimes relating to the genetic makeup of the individual.

And some doctors began to say, this is great. This will allow us to recover what is the essence, what is at the core of our being as doctors, which is that we aren’t able to give time and care and attention to our patients. And that was a very kind of positive view and understanding of the role.

Other doctors kicked back and said, in reality, we wouldn’t be so complacent because the real risk is that we will now be expected to see more patients and to see them more speedily rather than giving them more time and giving them more individualized attention. They said that was for two reasons. One, an obvious one, is that so much of health care is commercially driven and there are drug companies and other investors requiring a certain throughput.

But they said more subtly was that an AI can measure the amount of time you spend with a patient. It can measure how many patients you see, but it can’t necessarily quantify the quality of the interaction. So therefore, the quality of the care, the attentiveness of the communication gets lost because it’s not capable of being measured. So one of the dangers with the AI thing that we suddenly have to fit into a world where everything has to be measured and where some of our most important human tasks and human achievements are not necessarily capable of pure measurement or external measurement.

Silvia Cambié

So if I may, Neville, very quickly, I’ve got a follow up question. So, you know, those roles being dehumanized, as you described, that’s definitely an issue, again, going back to my experience in managed services. But often, you know, when someone works in that environment, as you say, that’s the culture, right? You have to deliver.

You participate in a lot of international discussions and you sit on different fora. Is there a serious effort to counter that mentality?

Paul Tighe

What I’ve found is sometimes an attentiveness of some of the people from the tech side, being very attentive to say, well, we will be benevolent towards those who are displaced. And we need to look at the possibility of having a system of a universal social benefit or some sort of a universal income that we will share with people that will compensate them for the work that they lose.

What we would be bringing to some of those discussions is a sense that, yeah, but work isn’t just about economic reward. Work is where I express my creativity. It’s where I express my identity. It’s where often I socialize. So in terms of some of the costs of loss of employment, it’s not simply about an economic argument. It’s back to more qualitative issues about what it means to be human.

Neville Hobson

Before I get to my specific question, it’s interesting, this topic, by the way, I find very interesting indeed, this particular segment of our conversation.

I guess my question is quite a broad one as a follow up to this broad topic, which is, if we’re talking about deploying AI efficiently, showing that it uplifts people rather than displaces people, I wonder in today’s climate, where morality seems to be absent in many organizations in terms of how they’re approaching their business and the treatment of employees, I guess the question I wanted to ask you is, what do you see as the moral obligation of companies and other organizations developing or deploying AI? What would you say to that?

Paul Tighe

Well, in a previous life, I used to teach business ethics. So I’m back to that famous article that’s saying that the business of business is to produce profits, but I think one of the things we’re all becoming much more aware of is that need to breach the corporate veil in terms of commercial activities that we ensure that corporations don’t somehow level down people’s sense of ethical responsibility.

So one of the issues that we would be kind of promoting is if you look at the area, the future of governance in the broader sense of this area, there’s the kind of governmental and multi-government multinational regulation that may be needed. Many of the companies talk about their commitment to establishing their own ethical practices.

But in the middle of that, I would also want to maintain something about the individual, the responsibility of the individuals who make up those companies. And our history in the world of treating whistleblowers is not great. They might get a wonderful film made about their life 30 years later after everything has fallen apart.

But it’s about somehow creating environments in which people feel they have a freedom to look beyond the simple tech moment of their task and to reflect on the broader human impact of what they’re doing. The language of many of the companies pays tribute to that, but it’s how do you change the culture of a corporation to ensure that the high and noble ethical standards that they often hold are in fact effective in day-to-day happenings.

There’s that old statement that, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So what is the culture of a group? I can have a lovely set of ethical principles, but I may be learning in my day-to-day work that all my boss is interested in is expediency and quick turnaround, and that we’re ahead of the competition in what we’re working on. So one of the challenges here is to try and get, which is again, precedes and will continue to be an issue, precedes AI is that issue about how do we create environments where ethics are important.

And one of the hopeful things I see in that area is that you see something like professional associations trying to articulate for their own members standards that they would hold to. So the IEEE, the electrical engineering groups, have been very good on kind of articulating standards that they will work to.

So I think it’s… we did a small thing with the Santa Clara University, which sits in Silicon Valley, who produced a handbook on how a corporation could intentionally create an ethical culture where individuals will be empowered to actually take seriously the high ethical standards that the companies may be trying to hold for themselves.

But I wouldn’t want to exaggerate or be naive in that matter. I think competition is driving a lot of what’s happening at the moment. The next standard is to get the next standards in. You know, there’s a small, relatively small number of companies who are in competition with each other to get ahead of the game on AI.

There’s a huge amount of money invested in it. And then there’s the geopolitical desire to keep one’s country ahead of any other country. So it’s complex and just in necessity, the environment to the broader sense is not necessarily conducive to the best ethical thinking and reflection.

Neville Hobson

Yeah. Ok. You’ve described the need for a wisdom of the heart in shaping AI’s future. And Antiqua et Nova mentions how a technological product tends to reflect the worldviews of developers, owners, users, and regulators. And in fact, this fits very nicely to an extension of what we’ve just been discussing. Because my question specifically is, what would be your advice to a corporate communicator trying to create a culture respectful of the dignity of technology users in their company.

Paul Tighe

Yes… I’m thinking here now! I would say that, I mean, I think the communicators, those who communicate on behalf of companies have a particular responsibility, which is to go beyond simply selling of their own product, of their own platforms.

I think on that area that I think there’s something at stake here that if I’m trying to get traction with the corporate world, it’s somehow about issues about trust and about risk. If companies behave in such ways that they destroy the trust that people should have on them, they will pay the price of that ultimately.

Maybe not immediately, but ultimately I’d like to think they will pay the price of that. And we’re beginning to see it with people being much less… people becoming even more suspicious and I think rightly so, more critical of the big companies and the platforms. I think people are becoming much more alert to the business models of companies… are becoming more alert to use that idea if the product is free, you’re the product. And I think cultivating that kind of sense of responsibility.

So if I was talking to the communicators of the companies, I think I would try and imagine that I am trying to create ultimately a public that is more educated, more alert, and more capable of being critical of what I am presenting rather than trying to bamboozle or to simply, I think even the long term, I will lose trust, yeah.

Neville Hobson

I think a kind of mini follow up to that would be given the reality of societies generally, particularly in the developed world, the Global North, if you will, fast moving, it’s fragmented, there’s so much disagreement and different opinions. Ethics doesn’t seem to get much of a look in, it seems to me. I don’t mean in terms of behavior and how people demonstrate ethics but conversations about ethics.

So my question to you on that then is how do we encourage deeper conversations about ethics, particularly in organizations? What’s your thinking on that?

Paul Tighe

My own thinking on that one is as somebody who’s worked in ethics over the years and we’re to recognize that sometimes we’re inclined to privatize ethics. We’re inclined to say, look, that’s somebody’s own view and just leave it to them. And that there’s a fear almost of entering.

But I think we need to empower people to ask questions about the choices that we make as individuals and that we make as a society. Which choices and which developments and which attitudes are actually conducive to what the Greeks would have called human flourishing, meaning human flourishing in terms of my individual sense of wellbeing, but also the wellbeing of the society in which I live.

And I’m conscious that the task of ethics, particularly around issues around AI, becomes complicated because we’re living in a very fractured world with different political systems, different religious beliefs, different philosophical commitments, different value systems.

But ultimately, I believe that there is something about being a human – and maybe this is back to the wisdom of the heart – that it is possible for human beings to discern together on what are the types of choices, developments, attitudes that actually promote a sense of well-being? And maybe more easy to get agreement on what are the attitudes and approaches that are certainly not conducive to well-being?

And in terms of thickening out an ethics dialogue and empowering people, one thing sometimes, I remember doing this for many years, I would have been invited into different professional associations to talk to them about ethics. And you had to remind them, you’re the experts, not me. I can teach you a method and a way of thinking and a way of analysis that is ethical. But ultimately, you’re the person who needs to think, reflect of what it is that gives value, worth and purpose to your life and to the life of people around you.

And that’s even in terms of some of the issues we had in one interesting dialogue with some people from China. And the issue that came in that discussion was a little bit like the Chinese were quite critical of the Western approach to ethics, which is highly individualistic. We were starting out being a little bit critical of AI in China and totalitarianism.

But what we began to perceive was maybe there was a corrective in the middle in how we think of what it is to be human. And to be human is to live in society with others. So even if we begin to think about how the decisions, the choices I make are not just impacting me, but others, and in the broader sense, the whole human family, then I think we get a possibility of finding coherence.

That’s not going to be easy, but I think I look at, I think, and in that one, I think it’ll be very much people coming from the humanities will help us there. Writers who can kind of get us thinking more critically.

I’ve read some novels by David Eggers. I don’t know if you’ve seen The Circle and The Every. I wouldn’t say they’re great novels, but they do capture something about a tendency in human beings, particularly in the Western world, to be willing to exchange their privacy, their own autonomy for convenience. He’s looking at that in terms of the world of social media. I think that will be even more so in the world of AI.

Are people going to be looking for convenience and ease and their own personal immediate satisfaction? Or will it be a capacity to think and reflect on a more grounded experience of what it is that really makes life worthwhile?

So I do think AI in its own ways – and Silvia, this back to you – is forcing us to open up some of those more limited questions about what it is to be human, what it is that gives us satisfaction in life, what is it that makes life worthwhile?

And I think the hope we had in producing Antiqua et Nova was kind of to say, look, here are our perceptions, here are some ideas we have, but this has to be a truly global debate involving people from different traditions and different perspectives, and we cannot be left either to the so-called ethical experts or to the so-called technical experts.

Shel Holtz

We have some time left and I’d love to follow up with a question on that global ethical debate. I know that The Vatican has supported the Rome Call for AI Ethics and has advocated UN level treaties of various types. Just recently we had Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would not sign on to the EU framework for AI ethics and I would have to characterize the US government’s approach to this as all gas no brakes.

Do you think that a global consensus is realistic and I’m wondering what role you think religious institutions should play and how that would work with input and dialogue from other types of institutions?

Paul Tighe

Yeah, no, think, I mean, at a time… one of the sad realities is a time when the world needs some form of global governance or agreed standards and agreed attitudes and some of those institutions have never been so weak. What I think, certainly, part of our Catholic social teaching tradition has always been to insist on the need for attempts to develop international… to strengthen the international organizations so that we have some sort of a global input into the thinking about our future.

I’m not trying to be naive here. I probably don’t want to become either despondent or to give up on it, but I mean, it’s been quite disappointing as you mentioned, you referenced the AI Act for the European Union, which was a relatively limited initial first step, which was beginning to get a little bit of traction until political considerations, I think, empowered the companies to feel that they don’t need to take it as seriously as I would have hoped they would.

So I was at the AI Summit in Paris at the end of January, beginning of February this year which was certainly disappointing in terms of the kind of reluctance to establish any overall governance standards and to somehow the geopolitical considerations of keeping one’s country to the forefront and therefore supporting the companies who are doing that was quite considerable. Yeah.

But I do think at the same time where I would build back and say, it’s not any one religion. And one of the interesting things is trying to develop kind of a community of religious voices who may have perspectives to offer on it, and who more particularly may through their own interaction with people who are working in the industry might be able to have an influence.

So one of the ones I mentioned, the document we worked on with the people from Santa Clara University and with people who work in Silicon Valley, many of whom were self-declared Catholics, who say I want to somehow find a harmony between my professional work and my actual religious convictions, my human convictions.

But I want to do that in a way that I can engage other people within my company who share the same ethical and moral concerns, may not have the religious beliefs or the religious vocabulary, but are no less committed to trying to ensure that we are attentive to the impact of what we’re doing in the broader sense on society.

So I think it’s… I have great hope in what individuals will do, and we’ve seen that in some situations where people have been willing to sacrifice their own jobs rather than doing something that they’re uncomfortable with.

Silvia Cambié

I had a follow-up question, Monsignor Tighe, about that need to find a balance between one’s professional obligations and one’s religious beliefs. So that’s something that in these days in tech, I kind of struggle with. And I encounter people in delivery jobs in tech who just have to roll out tech and do what they are told and basically meet their targets. But they are also struggling because of the privacy issues, because of the data issues. So what would be your advice to them?

Paul Tighe

Certainly, Silvia, I don’t want to be simplistic on this one, but I often, when I’m talking with people like that, I remind them that the, you know, what is a profession? Profession actually begins with a kind of a religious etymology, that it was standing for something. I profess something. And the skills I have as an engineer, the skills I have, the capacities I have as a doctor, enable me to almost intrinsically stand for certain values.

So the important issues that emerge there for me, I think, is to enable people to have that. What do you stand for? What are the limits of what you’re going to do? And how do you think about your own ethical and moral responsibility? That, again, in the professional issue here would be that is often achieved better when we can do it cooperatively with others when we take a stance together and professions traditionally limited entrance, they decide who’s qualified to have this term, whose behavior means we exclude them from the profession.

So that if a profession and people who work together can find a way of working in solidarity with each other and collaboratively to defend certain values rather than being picked off one by one and forced into things that they’re not comfortable.

Shel Holtz

Monsignor, looking back at the digital communication work that you have done and in looking at your background, it’s considerable media transformation at The Vatican, you’ve been involved with the Internet Governance Forum, South by Southwest panels.

I wonder… I’d love to get your views on what kind of communication strategies we in the communication profession should be looking at that, based on your experience, would best translate the ethical complexities about AI to our audiences, whether it’s employees inside our organizations or to the publics our organizations engage with.

Paul Tighe

Yeah, one of the things, Shel, I’ve done a lot of is peering in unlikely venues, dressed like this and all that goes with that. At least I don’t have to introduce myself. one thing that I’ve learned and I think I have no formal qualifications in communications.

What I learned, though, was what I call an insecure teacher, which is the insecure, the lecturer gives the lecture and if the student doesn’t understand, that’s his or her fault. The insecure teacher is the one who’s watching around the classroom to see, do they understand what I’m saying? Where I feel a responsibility not simply for the transmission but for the reception of a message.

So one of the things that I would say that for any people working in communications is to try and test effectively what people who are hearing you and listening to you are taking from what you’re saying. So that you try and close out that loop. If there’s a gap in the communication, I think it’s the communicator’s fault.

And I say that as I say the insecure teacher who had to correct examinations and could see these horrible answers that were coming back from people whose interest was to as accurately repeat what you had said as possible. I saw the mistakes.

So what I learned was to know your audience, know who you’re talking to, know their mentality and find a language that can bridge between you and them. So for people working communications in the tech standard, one of the things I would do is try and do whatever your communication is to bring people along so that they acquire enough understanding to maybe become more difficult and more awkward and ask harder questions, but to commit to empower them through your communication.

Neville Hobson

That’s a good response, I think.

We’re approaching the end of our time today, Monsignor, and we always ask this question in our interviews with interesting guests, such as you, for instance. I think we’ve covered a great deal on this fascinating topic that is very much at the heart of all the conversations we have had in episodes of this podcast over the last year or two about artificial intelligence that’s business focused.

And it’s terrific to get your insights on all of that. But I guess the concluding question we would have would be to say, if there’s a question you wish we had asked, but we haven’t asked it, what would that be?

Paul Tighe

I’m always nervous that I don’t get to speak enough about the potential and the good potential of the AI platforms. And I think properly developed and with adequate human buy-in, I think they will have extraordinary and positive transformative effects.

And I think of the area particularly of medicine. It won’t happen automatically because our medical systems are already just orientated towards the rich and not necessarily fully in keeping, but there is extraordinary potential there to offer new diagnostic tools, new pathways. That I would… there are the sort of things I would always want to say.

At the same time, back to the wisdom of the heart, I think it’s about… even there, we have to avoid the seduction of a technology that’s going to save us and get back to healthy practices in ways of living our life. And maybe AIs can become a kind of a way of tracking how we’re living, what we’re doing with our time, how we’re, I think it has a potential to make us more alert to who we are and what we’re doing and maybe therefore making healthier choices.

Shel Holtz

Excellent. Well, Monsignor, thank you very much for your time today. It’s been a fascinating conversation and we’re very grateful that you carved out the time to spend with us today.

Paul Tighe

No, thank you very much. Thank you. And look forward to seeing you all again sometime. Thank you.

Shel Holtz

It would be interesting to catch up again in a couple of years.

Silvia Cambié

Thank you.

Neville Hobson

Thank you.

Paul Tighe

Bye bye. Thank you. Or my avatar will do it. Cheers. bye. Thank you. Thank you.

Silvia Cambié

Thank you.

Neville Hobson

Thank you.

Fade in outro music, Neville Hobson pre-recorded narrative

 You’ve been listening to an FIR interview podcast. FIR Interviews are just one of the podcasts you’ll find on the FIR Podcast Network, which is anchored by For Immediate Release, a monthly show hosted by Neville Hobson and Shel Holz, with tech reports from Dan York.

Neville and Shel also host short-form episodes during the working week.

Visit us at FIR Podcast Network dot com to find all the public relations and organizational communication podcasts available for listening and following.

The post FIR Interview: Monsignor Paul Tighe on AI, Ethics, and the Role of Humanity appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In multiple ways, Artificial Intelligence is redefining the role of the public relations professional. Some of that change is the result of new tools that automate processes that once consumed copious amounts of time. One such tool reviews services that solicit expert commentary at journalists’ requests, then crafts responses. The marketing of this tool, dubbed Synapse by its Lithuanian founders, has sparked a considerable amount of controversy over ethical considerations. Neville and Shel discuss the pros and cons in this long-form FIR episode for July 2025.

Communicators are now also supposed to be able to detect phishing attacks disguised as media inquiries, to abandon age-old metrics in favor of meaningful outcomes, and overcome old tropes, like one wheeled out by former communicator Melinda French Gates, who claimed without evidence that tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg have aligned themselves with the Donald Trump Administration only at the behest of their communication teams.

Also in this episode:

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, August 25.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:02)

@nevillehobson (00:15)

Shel Holtz (00:19)

Starting with a review of the episodes since our last monthly. Neville, you want to give us that rundown?

@nevillehobson (00:50)

Yeah. So starting with the last monthly, 469 on the 23rd of June, the story that featured in the show notes was, is internal communication failing? And that topic was on a growing body of research suggesting that employees are more disconnected than ever. It was a good discussion. Other topics?

of the of the six we covered included social media has overtaken television as Americans primary source of news. And Pope Leo the 14th has called for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathered at the Vatican. That’s a significant topic, which will become clearer in the next few days, I would say I’ll talk more about that in a second. But we’ve got a comment there too, don’t we, Sean?

Shel Holtz (01:38)

This is a crucial point for the communications profession. Comms people operate at the intersection of tech and user behaviors. There’s a danger here. We might start convincing ourselves that just because we can predict reactions with AI, it’s all right to use predictive analytics to manipulate the employees we are communicating to. And I am totally with you as to the need to frame AI, not as a product, but as a public conversation, particularly about the human dignity of the users. It is indeed exciting to have a pope.

so well versed in tech and math.

@nevillehobson (02:39)

Shel Holtz (03:02)

@nevillehobson (03:13)

Shel Holtz (03:16)

@nevillehobson (03:38)

Can you be influential and anonymous at the same time? We asked. There’s a new brand of influencer. We explained faceless creators who wield their influence while never appearing on camera. Look at the pros and cons as we did. And there’s a comment on that one too, Shel.

Shel Holtz (04:22)

@nevillehobson (04:23)

Shel Holtz (04:46)

It also allows for faster production in some cases too, if you don’t have to put your face on camera and worry about lighting, camera quality, audio, et cetera. And that’s pretty much what we said in the episode too, in terms of why people are doing this. They have a full-time job in a lot of cases, and this is a side hustle and they really don’t want their name in their face out there. So they come up with…

another approach to being an influencer, often through an animated figure, which has gotten a lot easier to do these days, thanks to AI.

@nevillehobson (05:47)

Shel Holtz (05:54)

@nevillehobson (05:57)

Yeah. All part of the change. So 472 on the 16th of July, that was about the evolution of trust. We talked about new research that reveals that B2B decision makers have increasingly recognized the importance of trust. And I must say, Cheryl, we did make the comment ourselves, are they still?

talking about this thing as if it’s a new thing. It does surprise me so many times when I see that. But we analyzed the data and explored some of the opportunities for communicators to enhance organizational trust. We have a comment, right?

Shel Holtz (06:33)

from transparent communication and authentic storytelling to consistent branding and content that delivers on its promise that can genuinely create customer confidence and loyalty.

@nevillehobson (07:13)

Shel Holtz (07:33)

A fascinating one and had a long discussion about it with a colleague at work. This goes back to this notion, I think, of message mission control, which I first heard from Pitney Bowes probably 22, 23 years ago. And it’s all about this notion that there are elements of the technology experience that really aren’t in IT’s wheelhouse.

@nevillehobson (07:52)

Shel Holtz (08:07)

I said, really, does your printer approve everything that goes out to all employees as a printed memo? So, yeah, it’s a fascinating topic and one I actually agree with. I’m not 100 % convinced that it should belong in internal comms. I think maybe an ad hoc committee, an ad hoc task force that includes IT and comms and maybe a couple of others.

maybe users, but absolutely, internal comms should have a seat at that table.

@nevillehobson (09:01)

headline, I suppose, that gathers it all together as AI and human dignity. But it was quite a conversation we had. So you, I, you and me, plus, as you mentioned, Sylvia Cambier as our guest co-host, Sylvia was instrumental in securing this interview for FIR. And over a period of 40, 40 or so minutes, we talked with Monseigneur Tai that was centered around a document that the Vatican published earlier this year.

It was called Antiqua et Nova, and it is a reflection, if you will, on AI, in contrast to comparing it to human intelligence. And it focuses very strongly on ethical responsibilities tied to technological development and the Church’s mission to guide AI towards the common good. That’s summarizing it very, very simply.

But lots of topics within the broad subject matter. What makes human intelligence distinct in the age of machines and algorithms was one of the points we touched on the ethical responsibilities of those designing and deploying AI. Where does that sit? The impact of AI and dignity justice on the workplace. We had quite a few questions about the workplace, by the way, that are very pertinent as this, you know,

this technology, if you like, gets deployed throughout more organizations. And also, I guess, a point of helping understand why the church is involved in this, unique role in the global conversation on technology and humanity. So it’s not all about the tech, what about the people? So that was a really, really good conversation. So that will be published on Tuesday in around about 830am.

UK time, so that’s GMT plus one. And it’s definitely worth a listen, so make sure you do not miss that.

Shel Holtz (11:15)

maybe three levels down, which we certainly have in larger organizations, people leading teams, but also reporting up through the communications function. So that featured Russell Grossman from the UK, Sue Heumann from Canada, Mike Klein from Iceland and Robin McCaslin from here in the U.S. Great conversation. It’s up on the FIR Podcast Network right now. The next episode of Circle of Fellows is going to take place at

4 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 21st. The topic is on sustaining sustainability. How do we keep it front and center in our organizations? The panelists for that one will be Zora Artis from Australia, Brent Carey from Canada, Bonnie Kaver from the U.S., and Martha Muzyczka from Canada.

So that’ll be a fascinating conversation. There are definitely headwinds on the whole sustainability front and the whole corporate social responsibility front. So looking forward to that one. And now that we have addressed all of our housekeeping issues, it’s time to jump into our reports right

@nevillehobson (12:50)

Synapse Media has said it has instructed its lawyers to take action against Wellstone. So you get a sense of where that’s all going to go. But here’s how Synapse works. It reads a journalist’s request for comment, scours online sources, including books, reports and podcasts, and then uses generative AI to create two plausible, personal sounding responses. These include quotes and even made up anecdotes, all written to sound like they came from a real human expert. The PR professional,

simply chooses the version they prefer and copies it into an email. Wellstone claims this approach can quadruple output. They say one person can now do the work of five. The tool has been marketed with a one-time purchase price of $2,500. And while it’s still early days with no known customers, the ethical alarm bells are already ringing. Critics have called it unprofessional and deceptive. Alastair McCapra, CEO of the CIPR,

when so far as to say Synapse represents the very definition of unprofessional conduct. And in a comment on the press gazette supporting about this, Harrow owner Brent Farmelo said, every query on Harrow goes through AI detection and we permanently ban users who rely solely on AI to generate responses. The concern is that Synapse undermines trust, both in PR and journalism, by introducing fictionalized AI generated content

into a process that relies on authenticity and credibility. What’s more, it risks creating a layer of misinformation. If AI generated quotes are published as if they came from real people without fact checking or disclosure, the implications for journalism, public discourse, and the integrity of media coverage are quite serious. So the big question is this, as generative AI becomes more capable and more accessible,

Should PR professionals lean into automation for efficiency or are we crossing a line where convenience erodes trust?

Shel Holtz (15:16)

@nevillehobson (15:17)

We did, a couple of years ago.

Shel Holtz (15:44)

what they have written and tailor a pitch. then same as with Synapse, it will allow you to copy and paste that pitch and send it to that journalist. This is automating a process. It improves your productivity and your output and nobody complained about it. I can see some of the concerns around Synapse, but on the other hand, we talked about Harrow, which

Peter Shankman started and then sold. He’s got another one that he has started because he didn’t like what happened to Harrow. But in any case, they’re banning people who purely use AI. Well, if you’re a PR person copying and pasting the output from Synapse and simply sending it, then being banned is on you. You should never do that with any output from AI, whether it’s a…

an email you’re having at Help You Write or an article you’re having at Help You Write, whatever you want to go through and at the very least heavily edit that to make sure it sounds like you, to make sure it says what you want it to, to add anything that’s missing, to delete anything that you don’t want going out. You would do this with an intern, right? You wouldn’t just send what an intern gave you. So I think that’s, I think bad PR practitioners.

@nevillehobson (17:21)

Shel Holtz (17:27)

And again, if you’re editing it to make sure that it does represent what you want to pitch, it should be fine. The one part of your report that made me sit up though is what they’re charging. Was that $2,500 a month?

@nevillehobson (18:05)

Shel Holtz (18:07)

@nevillehobson (18:28)

perhaps this is hence the, you know, hurry, hurry, this is a short term one time deal, get it now before he goes away type of approach. Interesting what you said. I thought about profit in passing, but didn’t really give it any. No, this is not the same thing I said to myself, but you’ve introduced it. So.

What I heard what you were saying was that this is the same thing as profit. I don’t think it is.

Shel Holtz (18:53)

it’s not the same thing as profit, but it’s automating a PR process and.

@nevillehobson (18:58)

without anything else, which is what this can do as well. This can also do, where you can edit it stuff if you want to, but it’s actually being pitched as you do not need to do that at all. And it’s being pitched as this little quadruple output, output. One person can now do the work of five. Ergo, you don’t need those other four people, right? Get rid of them, that’s save money. So I sense, I see the alarm centered around that. I’m not sure I agree with the criticisms about

basically saying this is unethical and we should not allow this to happen, et cetera, because, wait a minute, is profit like that? And I believe they are an ethical business. We interviewed the founder and have a high regard for him. I keep an eye on what developments are happening with profit. So I know a number of people who use that service. This is not the same thing it seems to me. Yet, your dismissal of it, if you like, is a valid point to make, I think, in this time, because

Things are moving so darn fast with AI that what you described with something like a chat GPT AI agent or whatever else is next around the corner is going to challenge this like nobody’s business. So who is the market for this? I wonder the company’s based in Lithuania. According to the press gazette, they’ve been on an email blitz around the agency world in London seeking sales, effectively the sales pitch emails.

The writer at PR Press Gazette got hold of one of those and the report, which is linked in the show notes, dissects that quite severely. So I can understand Alastair McCapper at the CIPR that saying this represents a very definition of unprofessional conduct. I wonder what Alastair would say about profit. I’m not challenging Alastair for anything at all, just wondering out loud in light of what you and I are just discussing.

Critics say this is unprofessional and deceptive. If the similarity with tools like profit are such that you give it the prompt, as we now call it, you prompt the tool and it gives you a response. You copy that and stick it in the email and send it out. So is that unprofessional and deceptive? To me, this is the heart of the wider debate about this, that embraces using generative AI.

write content and should you disclose it and stuff like that. I struggle in understanding those criticisms, frankly, because what’s the difference between a prompt to chat GPT and getting a response, then let’s call it a prompt to your contractor or your intern or your colleague. Hey, Jim, can you draft a first draft press release on this subject in this five bullet points? What’s the difference?

you’re using someone as a tool to assist you. And in the sense of this, you’re using this tool as a means to assist you in achieving your goal. That said, equally can see why it attracts such powerful emotive responses, because this is after all, all part of the wider picture about the robots are taking over, am I gonna lose my job and all those kinds of things. So I get that entirely.

And you can’t pacify that sort of worry by saying, this is a tool, that’s all. And it’s nothing to do with deceptive practice, because that’s not the perception that people might have. So I don’t know where this will go. Are we crossing a line where convenience erodes trust? And to many, the answer to that is yes. To others, maybe not. So I don’t know where this leaves its shell, to be honest.

Shel Holtz (22:58)

People can use tools deceptively and it doesn’t please me to know that they’re marketing it based on your ability to use it deceptively, but you don’t have to, right? You can abide by the code of ethics from PRSA or IBC or CIPR or what have you and use this ethically, but what is it doing really? I mean, I get Peter Shankman’s new version of Harrow. I subscribe to that.

So this would just read it for me. I do this with a service called Drip with all the AI focused newsletters that I subscribe to. I don’t have the time to read them all. So I have Drip get the subscription and I get a daily summary of everything that’s in them. That’s essentially what this is doing is going through these services and identifying journalists looking for quotes or interviews.

from something related to your client base or your organization. I’m looking for something where I can get our construction subject matter experts and thought leaders into the press. you know, occasionally something shows up. It just reads it for me. And then it goes out and it finds information that we can use to pitch that. Now I’m going to align that if I find it, if I were using something like Synapse.

I’m going to align that with our area of subject matter expertise and the work that we have done and the people that I would reach out to to be the interviewer, the source of the quote. All it’s doing is streamlining. And is it maybe going to lead to the need for fewer low level PR people to do all of this work? Maybe that’s where we’re headed with this. I think we have to deal with that and and associated with that, by the way.

we have to deal with how are we going to bring people into this profession if the entry level work is being shoved off to AI. But I absolutely see it. I I’ve used the OpenAI agent to identify podcasts that I should be pitching, recognizing the importance of that in AI optimization. I want to get our subject matter experts onto podcasts. So I said, go to our website.

understand our markets, understand our areas of specialization, then go find podcasts related to construction, to the AEC industry, and to the markets that we serve, and visit their websites for those podcasts, find out if they have a policy or a process for pitching guests, and then put it all in a spreadsheet for me. And I just sat back and watched while it did it.

@nevillehobson (25:55)

Shel Holtz (25:56)

know, that’s something that I would have given to a lower level employee at some point in my career. Now I type a prompt. So deal with it. This is coming.

@nevillehobson (26:04)

it is. I think, though, there’s a couple of clues in the press gazette’s report, which I which I use primarily to come up with my own thoughts on this, particularly the part where I said in response to what I what I found out if I generated quotes are published as if they came from real people without fact checking or disclosure, then there are serious implications. Well, yes, but that applies to

everything you see out there if people do that. They take something generated or worse, someone else wrote it and let’s pass it off as their own. What’s the difference between that and an AI doing it? So that’s down to people’s behavior. The concern that Synapse undermines trust, as Press Gazette’s report talks about, by introducing fictionalized AI-generated content into a process that relies on authenticity and credibility. I stopped myself when I read what

they were saying and what the Lithuanian PR agency was saying too, that in fictionalized AI generated content, I don’t think that’s what people would be doing fictionalized, meaning it’s not fact, it’s fiction. I’m not sure what that looks like.

Shel Holtz (27:13)

is the AI getting its information from? It’s from the training set.

@nevillehobson (27:17)

Yeah, exactly. there’s a lot of questions about this. Yeah, I do understand that the alarm bells that is ringing nevertheless. So how would how would they address that? I don’t know. think you PR professionals need to be very clear on what resources they’re using to do this. Follow those codes of conduct that you referenced. But this surely does come down to

belief in you’re doing the right thing, are you not? Or are you doing what people are alarmed about? Just copying and pasting and passing it off as genuine. That is in that case, you’re not a professional at all. So this is this is part of the shifts that are happening show that alarm the hell out of a lot of people. Yet this is the landscape, we have to figure it out.

Shel Holtz (28:06)

joined a professional association without having signed on to a code of ethics. And they do whatever they think they have to in order to produce results for a client, regardless of how unethical it is. And they’re the ones who are going to use this the way Synapse is pitching it. So this is a broader problem. The rest of us can use these tools, you know, sign on to the Venice Pledge, the…

the pledge that was developed by the Global Alliance around ethical use of AI by public relations practitioners and communicators. Pay attention to your own code of ethics and use these tools ethically. But I don’t see a problem with what Synapse is doing. I see a problem with the way they’re pitching it, but I don’t see a problem with the technology. I don’t see a problem with using this in an ethical way.

@nevillehobson (29:20)

Shel Holtz (29:25)

more critical and I’m going to talk about that a little bit more later in the show. But let’s start with phishing attacks from fake journalists. Yeah, you heard that right. Recent reporting from Axios confirms rising incidents where criminals impersonate reporters. They send what seem like legitimate interview requests or pitches to PR pros and clients alike. These scams jumped around 17 % since last September fueled by AI’s ability to assemble credible sounding emails.

using personal and outlet-specific details. These journalist phishing emails are not mass spam. They’re highly targeted, AI-generated messages that lure PR professionals or executives into revealing sensitive information or clicking links. In one case, attackers impersonated major outlets to pitch exclusive coverage, weaponizing publicly available data, like publication history and colleague names, to appear legitimate.

Now, the result of this is that PR teams are having to act as security filters as much as media liaisons. As experts advise, when a suspicious DM or email arrives claiming to be a journalist, the best defense is polite paranoia. Don’t click, don’t respond directly, forward it to your media relations team for vetting and verify the pitch through trusted context. Beyond phishing, PR professionals are also debating measurement frameworks.

and facing pushback on yet another measurement metric. Katie Payne, the industry’s measurement queen and a longtime friend, I got to know Katie really well through my involvement with the Society for New Communication organization. You and I were both fellows. right, Society for New Communication Research. Katie was heavily involved.

@nevillehobson (31:31)

Shel Holtz (31:36)

This critique resonates with ongoing efforts to move past outdated PR metrics. A group of major agencies recently announced they’re ditching impression metrics entirely in favor of readership-based analytics, thanks to platforms like Memo, which track actual article consumption and engagement across 10,000 publications. But this transformation requires education. Clients and executives are used to big numbers, even if those numbers don’t reflect meaningful impact.

Making the case for smarter outcome-driven communication means resetting expectations and elevating conversations beyond clicks or column inches. Anybody actually still measuring column inches? Finally, let’s touch on reputation fallout from misaligned values. Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Bill Gates and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

⁓ recently called out tech leaders who publicly support public political figures. And what she did was she claimed that they’re following advice from their communication teams. Now, when someone with that kind of stature starts reinforcing old tropes about PR, it just amplifies the perception. And it was particularly shocking considering that she worked in communications before she met and married Bill Gates.

So the third headwind PR pros now face involves values misalignment and reputational risk in high stakes public discourse. Melinda Gates, she’s a billionaire philanthropist now, recently criticized tech CEOs who have publicly aligned with former president Trump. This would be Mark Zuckerberg, for example. Her point is that some leaders appear to be pivoting away from their values not out of conviction,

but because a communication advisor told him it was the right thing to do. Here’s what she said in a podcast interview, word for word, we have all time should be living these values out and not pivoting to what some comms person tells us. Now this statement lands as a rebuke and caution for PR professionals. Authenticity matters more than it ever has. If executives act in a way that contradict their stated beliefs because it’s convenient or media safe,

That gap is increasingly noticed. Crisis communications today can become long-tail reputation erosion, but it’s also a reinforcement of an old negative PR trope. And when someone of Melinda Gates’s stature says it, it amplifies it tremendously and it doesn’t do us any good. So just to recap, we got to look out for phishing attacks that are aimed at PR people. We have to look at the measurement.

that we’re using because increasingly the old metrics don’t work. And we have to watch for these claims of what PR is doing that is harming society, which is I just can’t believe that a PR person is out there counseling their CEOs to align themselves with any political figure in particular.

So taken together, these trends suggest that PR’s future is just about placements. It’s about credibility, ethics, and strategic integrity.

@nevillehobson (35:16)

certainly here in the UK from the the cyber security folks in the government, the government agencies who address this, particularly in light of awareness is high now. Following the cyber attack on Marks & Spencer, the big retailer that took them off that took the literature, the website down for ordering for three months, it’s cost of serious money. And it’s had a massive impact on their credibility to the extent that

latest league table show they’ve fallen from the top spot as the most respected retailer in the UK. For years, they’ve held that position. They’ve now dropped. So Waitrose or John Lewis, another big retailer, their supermarket Waitrose. So they usually be jockeying a position like this between the two and they’ve now taken the helm. And their troubles, by the way, are still not concluded. But this is interesting. Fishing in temperature on the rise,

Shel Holtz (36:14)

@nevillehobson (36:31)

just a quick bit of research made me even more suspicious. So I did nothing with it, but I’ve now learned that that was a phishing attempt. So you got to be on the ball with this. And I think tying it all up is this with the others you mentioned, and particularly the I did this because a commerce person told me to you think we in the profession need to get a grip on these issues. Is it do you think

Do we need just more training of people with that kind of thing? Certainly with phishing, this requires, I think, more than the profession is currently doing to alert people from two perspectives. One, the communicator as the counselor and advisor to the organization what to do about these things. But also as the more proactive role in helping probably more senior people, but probably everyone in the organization to

know what to have, what to do if you think you’ve been the victim here. And I’m not talking about these kind of slick, animated videos that a lot of companies tout and push out when when you they want you to do this, you know, online training and get awareness and learning about how to recognize these things. They I often wonder what true value do they have in helping people understand this issue of what to do.

So there’s that opportunity for communicators. But I do wonder though, with this, the other things you’ve talked about, that do we have the right skills in the profession, in the profession, to help communicators truly know what to do in these situations, or not? I wonder.

Shel Holtz (38:35)

require people to do annual online training. And I think the good that it does is at least it creates some awareness for a while, but it’s a requirement. We can monitor who has taken it and not and reach out to the people who haven’t to say, you you need to take this. And then if they still don’t, we can reach out to their managers and say, you have people who haven’t completed the training. We do this around safety and workplace violence and workplace harassment too.

But it’s not enough. You need to keep a drum beat up. First of all, as new techniques emerge that we are aware of, we communicate those very short little articles and we get them out through multiple channels. We have our executives talk about it at the all hands meeting. We bring it up occasionally at the monthly operations meetings. And with all of this, even digital signage, really quick hit awareness.

campaigns. Even with all of this, there are employees who are not going to hear it. One thing that we’re doing to try to make people pay more attention is to say, everything that we’re talking to you about that can affect us here at our company can affect you at home too. So the same techniques are being used to get credentials from your personal accounts. so pay attention to this because it could save your

personal life, not just our company. So yeah, you’re right. We have to become conversant in cybersecurity and stay up to date on the latest trends, the latest data, the latest techniques, and find ways to break through the noise and to capture the attention of our audiences to make sure that they know about this. I have not seen IABC PRSA, PR Week, or anybody else talk about this.

fishing yet. This was an Axios report where I found it. So we need to get the word out.

@nevillehobson (40:53)

Shel Holtz (41:10)

@nevillehobson (41:16)

but as content designed for AI systems. Her argument is straightforward. Press releases today serve two audiences, she says, traditional media and generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. That means a press release isn’t just a story, it’s training data. It needs to inform and persuade not only human journalists, but also algorithms that summarize, reinterpret, and surface that content in response to user queries.

And for that to work effectively, releases need to follow a structure that’s both human readable and machine digestible. Evans suggests that the modern press release should still follow journalistic standards. For instance, AP style, clear sourcing and strong headlines, but also include structured formatting, clear language and trust signals that help AI tools understand and elevate the content.

On the points of style, by the way, if you’re in the UK, you’ll likely be using the Oxford Guide to Style, formerly known as Hart’s Rules rather than the AP Style Guide. Doesn’t matter actually, as long as you’re using one of those, that’s good. That might mean including prompt-like phrasing, definitive outcomes, and text that aligns with how AI systems pass authority and relevance. This approach recalls an earlier experiment. I mentioned this is coming at the beginning here.

The social media press release, the template introduced by Todd Deferin back in 2006, it reimagined the press release for the Web 2.0 era. Multimedia, bullet points and links instead of dense paragraphs. That idea didn’t gain as much traction as many hoped it would, perhaps because the infrastructure wasn’t there yet. But in 2025, the infrastructure most definitely is, says Evans. AI tools are reshaping.

how people find, consume and trust information. Search engines are incorporating AI generators, summaries, news aggregators and research platforms use LLMs, large language models. If your press release isn’t visible to AI or isn’t written in a way that helps its surface, it might as well not exist, she says. So the conversation now is this, should we be writing for the journalists and the algorithm? And how do we do that while still maintaining journalistic integrity

clarity and credibility. There are challenges. Here are three. Lack of standards. There’s no defined schema for AI ready press releases yet. No equivalent of schema.org for PR. AI system opacity. We don’t fully know how LLMs weigh or interpret content from wire releases. And skepticism. As with social media press releases, some PR pros may dismiss this as overkill or gimmicky without clearer benefits or just

don’t care about it at all. So is it time communicators embraced this dual purpose writing style, or is it just another passing trend? Shell, what do you think?

Shel Holtz (44:38)

We’re going to talk about this in much greater detail in the next report, but just to telegraph that a little bit, what AI training sets look at and find credible is third-party reports, not what you publish on your own website. Most companies do have a repository of their press releases, we do, and it goes out on the wire from you, but what the AI looks at for

the sake of credibility is what publications have picked up that press release and written about it. And of course there are publications that will just publish your press release the way it is. They’re just looking to fill space and have stuff on their outlet. But the good ones are going to use it as a basis for original reporting. So it needs to be a good enough press release to entice that type of reporting. ⁓ For those who

just publish the press release the way it is, it’ll be really important for that press release to take a different approach to the point of your report. ⁓ One of the things that I understand AI looks for, the LLMs when they’re extracting the press releases and the content that the press releases were used to create from the media outlets,

What they’re looking for is less of the what we do and what we sell and what our products are and what our services are and more of the how, more process. So I think that’s a shift that we have to make in the angle that we’re taking when we’re crafting press releases. And I think that AI and this whole direction that we’re going,

has reinvigorated the press release. mean, people have over the last few years been talking about it as a relic and why are you doing this? You need to be using influencers and you need to be doing content marketing and press releases are so 50 years ago. AI has reinvigorated the value of the press release for just this reason.

@nevillehobson (47:06)

complimentary thing called the algorithm that we need to create content for. And Sarah Evans actually included in her LinkedIn post, a rather neat LinkedIn style slide deck, you can’t download it or grab it, you can only scroll through it. That showed the schema structures that she proposes that could be where we go next with this to make it usable by AI systems. And I think that’s

That’s the bit that is key to this, is key to understanding the possibilities of this. So, and I like what you said earlier too, that the profession’s responsibility is to develop the schema for this. And that could be a great opportunity for professional associations to take a lead on something like that or one in particular. So that you have something that’s universal. And once you’ve got that, which I guess supports my feeling that

social media press release one of the reasons and may not be the most significant reason why it didn’t take off is there was no infrastructure to support it or making it easy for people to adopt it. I remember seeing back then version 2.0 of the template it didn’t get beyond 2.0 but when I saw 1.5 I then saw variations of that all over the place as people were adapting it to the knees then sharing what they did so utter confusion everywhere as to which was the valid one to use.

That I don’t think is likely to happen with this. The landscape’s completely different apart from anything else, but maybe the timing’s right.

Shel Holtz (49:00)

You don’t need infrastructure for this. All you need is a different approach to what you’re writing. You don’t need to create sections and have links to things that are uploaded. I remember Jason Keith, think his name is, had a press release distribution service that was focused on the social media press release. I don’t think it’s still around, but this is just the way you write it. It’s not a different…

@nevillehobson (49:07)

Shel Holtz (49:28)

@nevillehobson (49:43)

many, many others, New York Times, although I got a subscription to that, but I could do this if I wanted to. The only thing the only one it doesn’t work with that I discovered is PR week, I have no idea why this cannot get into that one. they are pretty good at it, at stopping people bypassing the paywall. But it’s a very interesting one. And it works all the time. It works flawlessly. Most of the other time. Also to mention you when you talked about

the Online Safety Act in the UK and verifying age to protect children from pornographic content. The UK communication regulator published a pretty neat explainer on how age checking works in the UK. It’s worth a look at. I’ve noticed a lot of comment in the last few days about people saying how easy it is to bypass this verification check. And so if that’s the case, they got to step up and fix that. Blue Sky,

introduced this this past week in the UK as part of this law. So the other day when I logged in in the morning, I was got a pop-up say I had to verify my age. My first thought was, well, you know a lot about me and I’m verified with you, so you know my age, but I get it. They have to go through this process. The third party provider that does it. You’ve got to photograph your driver’s license or a passport or some other government ID.

upload that file. And then the next step in the verification is either a really call it a picture of you that you share or check on a credit card. I chose the latter because that was the easiest one to do. And so I’m verified in that sense. I just wonder though, how, how truly robust that is in light of the criticisms. But it’s good that you had the topic in your report.

Shel Holtz (51:56)

blue sky. It’s just for Pornhub and other porn sites. But it’ll be interesting to see how easy it is to get around those checks. So, I mean, you know.

@nevillehobson (52:35)

an interesting point to make because in the UK, the UK online safety isn’t just about porn sites. It’s related to any content that’s age restricted according to the new law that’s been passed. So there is that difference in that case.

Shel Holtz (52:49)

Occasionally, something will show up in a feed and I want to read that article maybe because I want to write about it. Maybe I want to include it as a topic on FIR. And I can’t get to it because of a paywall. I like the sites that give you five or 10 free articles a month before the paywall kicks in, because that would be enough for me for the Financial Times, where I get maybe two or three articles a month that cross my feeds that I want to go.

take a look at so that I might incorporate that information into a report or even alert my leadership at the company I work for to this information. So I think this rush to paywall everything is, I understand it, but I don’t think it’s well considered the approach that’s been taken so far.

@nevillehobson (53:57)

Shel Holtz (53:58)

Don’t just link to your content anymore. They generate answers that borrow authority from trusted sources. And who’s always built trust at scale online? That would be us, PR and communications professionals. Research from Search Engine Land underscores that AI-powered search engines increasingly rely on brand mentions, reputation, and authority signals retrieved from across the web.

That means that when AI answers replace blue links, it’s not keyword density or meta tags doing the heavy lifting. It’s earned media mentions and narrative consistency. Ginny Jitrich wrote about this, and she puts it bluntly, PR has always been about building trust and carrying that trust into every story or quote your brand participates in. Today, when AI synthesizes answers, it looks for those signals. And as she writes,

We’re telling the same clear story everywhere, so AI can’t miss it. That’s why disciplines like GEO, that’s Generative Engine Optimization, and AEO, that’s Answer Engine Optimization, are emerging. GEO aims to ensure your content actually gets cited to become part of the AI’s answer. AEO focuses on structuring content in a conversational, Q &A-friendly way so that AI can…

easily use it. And this is probably what’s going to find its way into a schema if a professional association gets around to sharing that. But no matter how well designed your website is, AI models still prioritize third party editorial sources. And of course, as I mentioned before, a lot of people who get a press release are going to use it as a foundation for their own original reporting. Muckrax 2025 report.

highlights that over 95 % of AI-cited links are from earned media, not owned or paid content. And these citations actually reshape the entire answer AI gives. If your PR team isn’t securing coverage across high-quality publications, journalistic outlets, podcasts, analyst quotes, your brand won’t surface in those AI-generated answers, no matter how much of it you’ve published on your own sites. For example, when people ask generative AI something like,

best web design firm in Chicago, what really makes Orbit Media or others show up is repeated brand coherent mentions in reputable publications written by journalists consistent in message, quoted accurately. That’s what we do. And it’s the accelerator for AI visibility. So I’m increasingly seeing PR agencies evolving from just earned coverage into source engineering, designing narratives and placements that feed the machine.

As a recent piece puts it, strategic PR teams are no longer just telling stories, they’re engineering the data that AI models pull from. In practical terms, here’s what working PR teams are doing differently in 2025. First, they’re prioritizing earned media in authoritative outlets, not just for backlinks, but because AI is trained more heavily on sources like AP, Reuters, respected trade publications, industry podcasts. That placement leads directly into AI visibility.

Second, they’re applying semantic consistency across channels. The brand name, executive titles, and narrative themes are repeated. Third, they’re auditing the machine’s brand view, monitoring not just media coverage, but what AI knows about your brand and its outputs and adjusting messaging accordingly. Fourth, they’re structuring content for both people and algorithms. Clear metadata, Q &A formats, concise summaries that serve both readers and AI ingest pipelines,

And fifth, they’re geographically targeting their public relations for local news placements that can lift visibility and AI answers for place-based queries. For local businesses, this is a powerful, though under-leveraged lever. Meanwhile, TechRadar and others report that younger audiences rely on AI chat or conversational interfaces instead of Google, undercutting traditional SEO and forcing a rethink of discoverability strategies.

Brands now need structured, accurate, and syndicated data, often via knowledge graphs, to feed AI systems and prevent misinformation or omission. Startups like Profound, Athena, and Scrunch AI, got to love some of these names, have emerged to monitor and influence brand visibility inside large language model outputs, an entirely new tech niche built around this shift. And yes, PR agencies still matter, even with AI tools that can draft press releases,

because AI can’t build journalist relationships, craft narratives for trusted outlets, or manage timing and nuance the way humans do. Again, you gotta have the human in the loop. It’s just that AI lets you focus on these things. As one article put it, while AI can help with execution, it lacks the insight and relational intelligence that PR professionals provide. In short, public relations is no longer just a support for marketing. It’s the foundation of visibility in AI search.

@nevillehobson (59:33)

So she mentions that how AI is rewriting how attention, reputation, discoverability work, but the fundamentals haven’t changed at all. Trust matters, relevance matters, authority matters. These are the currencies of the AI era, she says, and they are the currencies of PR. She also mentions, and I was glad to see this, the PESO model in the context of all of this. I’ve seen quite a bit of criticism in recent months about PESO and how it hasn’t…

adapted to the changes we’re seeing in all this. I don’t agree with that, but I’ve not looked into it in depth, the comments that I’ve seen. But Jeannie notes that the Pace and Model campaigns are designed for human audiences and for LLMs to find, interpret and share accurately. So you don’t have to imagine for long, it’s already happening, she says, if you were wondering what is actually going on. AI is the interface through which people get information.

PR becomes the operating system that powers accurate brand aligned answers. Great visualization of that. can see that actually. Those who understand how to feed the system through trust, relevance, and strategic visibility will lead. So I think that’s a good take on the changes that we’re seeing happening in front of our eyes almost daily, that what actually matters. And it’s not about pivoting either. We just need to step up.

Shel Holtz (1:01:20)

They’re not reading what their professional associations are sharing. Somehow we have to get this information to people or, you know, frankly, what’s probably more realistic is that the people who do pay attention will succeed and those who don’t will fail and just fall off the tree.

@nevillehobson (1:02:06)

is about a shift in what social media is fundamentally for. Take Metta’s recent positioning. Mark Zuckerberg now describes Facebook and Instagram not as social networks, but as platforms for discovery, expression and entertainment. Kind of trips off the tongue, it? DEE, discovery and expression and entertainment. The implication is clear. Yeah, DEE, yeah. The implication is clear, reported French.

Shel Holtz (1:02:50)

@nevillehobson (1:02:55)

and algorithmically optimised to keep people scrolling. This represents a huge cultural pivot they say. Social platforms are now more like streaming services than networks. People use them not to connect, but to consume. And from a communication perspective, that changes everything. This shift is reflected in emerging trends identified by the drum and others. Brands are posting less, but focusing more on quality, short form video, strong storytelling and emotional tone.

There’s growing emphasis on social search. Users now search TikTok, Reddit or chat GPT before turning to Google, if they even do. Private communities are gaining ground. Places like Discord, Telegram and closed groups like LinkedIn offer engagement where the feed no longer delivers. And authenticity, or at least a performative version of it, is winning. Think of Duolingo’s chaotic TikTok presence when they killed off their owl logo.

didn’t phase anyone and their ⁓ presence on TikTok is in the millions following that, that didn’t decline at all. Think about the irreverent tone of Ryanair’s social media team. We’ve talked about Ryanair on this podcast before, Shell, and they insult customers, they do all this stuff and people love it. So their presence across social networks is increasing literally day by day. So that is a shift where you

normally would expect you to be totally aware of treating with the customer. The customer is always right. And those kind of differential relationships, not anymore. And people seem to like this. And there are two brands who are gaining from that. So this is not simply evolution. It’s reinvention. The feed is no longer a channel for personal expression or connection. It’s a content platform. For communicators, that means rethinking everything from platform strategy and influence selection.

to brand voice and metrics of success. So the question is this, if social media is no longer about being social, what is the role of communication professionals in shaping visibility, trust and conversation in the new landscape? Or put it another way, if social media is now more like Netflix than a network, what does that mean for how brands and communicators show up?

Shel Holtz (1:05:41)

was that social media was going to be a wonderful thing. The public commons giving everybody a voice. Boy, were we wrong. Were we naive about that? We did not anticipate the algorithm and getting people to doom scroll for every spare minute they have and even some minutes that aren’t spare. You see people at their desks at work doing that. So.

@nevillehobson (1:06:13)

Shel Holtz (1:06:26)

And yeah, when I do go to my feeds, interjected amidst those people that I do see whose comments to me or a post about something I’m genuinely interested in in their lives because of that personal connection, intermingled with all of that is what you said somebody characterized as the equivalent of streaming media. And how many videos do I end up watching because of that?

It is something where we need to make that adjustment and it requires being on top of the trends. And this trend isn’t going to last forever, forever either. I mean, nothing does. So especially with the shifts we’re seeing in media. So it is incumbent upon us to stay on top of these changes, even though, you know, I mean, this has been this has been occurring over time. This isn’t something that was a sudden

veering of the approach that the social media outlets have taken. This has been a very gradual shift that we now find ourselves at. I don’t want to say the end of it because it is probably an ongoing change, but we find ourselves where we are. And if we want to produce the kind of outcomes that our clients and our employers expect of us, we have to accommodate them. Otherwise, we’re just talking to ourselves out there.

@nevillehobson (1:08:08)

not everyone else does like that, but they’re benefiting from it in their niche with their type of audience. mean, there multiple questions arise from that. it ethically right thing to do? What about others in the organization? How do the employees feel about it and things like that? So I think it would be difficult to say, to answer the questions, what does this mean for our brands and communicators show up, show up, get to understand how it works and

what you’re going to do about it, what it means to you and your brand. I mean, I can’t think of a simpler way of saying that. And certainly not going to sit here and try and say, here’s a detailed assessment of what you should be doing. You need to understand the shifts that are happening. You need to realize that this is transitional and this is not permanent in the detail. But the fact of this is likely to be long term. The old days that you described

with fondness of the past where everyone did engage and we welcomed it. We evangelized it 20 years ago. We wanted everyone to be online and sharing their lives. And like you said, Cheryl, I sometimes slap my forehead and think, what have we done? So it’s actually influenced me hugely in where I’m no longer online. And where I am online, what am I doing there that’s

very, very different to what I was doing 10 years ago, even five for that matter. So things are shifting. I’m an observer more than an active protagonist on this stage, simply because my interests and needs have changed from what they were five years ago. But I look at developments like this, I find this one quite fascinating as another step in the evolutionary movement we’re at. I think

The only thing I could say is precisely that. Understand how this is. Figure out how you’re going to behave in this and get to it.

Shel Holtz (1:10:37)

that fits the ethos of each of those networks where we’re participating. So it’s incumbent upon communicators to understand the content marketing component of their job. Part of that is perhaps moving away from social media or adding non-social media channels to the mix. So…

Picture the CMO, the chief marketing officer of a major fashion brand flipping through Instagram and thinking, is this really how I’m supposed to build a loyal relationship with Gen Z? So instead, she launches a newsletter on Substack and suddenly she has a sent to inbox channel where real conversation is possible. Brands are increasingly turning to Substack, not just email newsletters, but Substack in particular.

Not because it’s just another email tool, because it offers control, community, and credibility. According to Marketing Brew, in mid-2025, brands such as Madewell, Tory Burch, American Eagle, Rare Beauty, and The Real Deal launched newsletters on Substack. These aren’t boring corporate updates. They’re cultural briefs, contributor channels, founder stories, and stylist features that appeal to audiences in ways that social media can’t replicate these days. For example,

American Eagles Off the Cuff is designed like a group chat with Gen Z, culturally tuned in, conversation driven, and not overly transactional. Within six weeks, it hit over 2,000 subscribers, even though most of the content was not product focused. Now, you may wonder why Substack? Morning Consult found that Substack users tend to be heavy news readers, younger, they’re Gen Z and millennials by and large.

They’re highly engaged and more likely to trust brand communication delivered via newsletter than via social media threads. Substack delivers a clean, distraction-free experience and a built-in discovery feed encouraging deeper engagement. So let’s look at Rare Beauty. This is Selena Gomez’s brand, and it created Rare Beauty Secrets on Substack, offering behind-the-scenes stories from product development to mental health summits. It’s less about selling lipstick

more about sharing values. The newsletter is clearly resonating with high open rates and a Discovery Feed subscriber rate growth around 17%. Brands like Hinge are also experimenting with immersive narrative series like No Ordinary Love, a five-part literary series that tells moving stories tied to their dating app mission. The key is compelling content, again, content marketing that feels human and original rather than promotional.

So what are PR and communication pros learning from this wave? Well, the Content Marketing Institute lays out best practices that fit neatly with public relations instincts, establish a consistent cadence, use authentic storytelling, design for readability, integrate content contributors, and above all, make the content about value, not selling, first. Additional analysis underscores a few crucial points.

You can’t treat Substack like a traditional newsletter tool. It’s a community platform intended for editorial quality, not emails disguised as ads. Partnerships matter. American Eagle brought on Casey Lewis, author of After School, as a guest editor that cross-pollinated subscribers and raised credibility for their off-the-cuff newsletter. And founders have to be voices in these newsletters. Brands with strong founder voices. Schoolhouse, Gia and others.

They’re using Substack to create intimate access and narrative continuity. It works particularly well when a founder or a key personality leads the newsletter, though always anchored under the brand’s umbrella. There’s even an editorial economics side to this. While brands generally keep their Substack’s newsletters free for now as part of building trust, platforms like Substack are pushing tools to help creators monetize, and brands might explore premium options down the road.

For independent writers, ad revenue is already a growing part of platform economics, but most brands are focused on nurturing audience relationships first. Substack itself continues to evolve. As of early 2025, it surpassed 5 million paid subscriptions, and it’s doubled down on audio, video, and community features like chat threads, making it more than a newsletter tool, but a branded content environment. From a PR lens,

You got to consider that newsletters reinforce brand voices and values. They let you lean into storytelling purpose and humanity. They give you control. There’s no algorithm deciding how far they’re going to boost it up. No reach penalties. And your subscriber list is yours. It’s discovery driven. Readers come via Substax ecosystem, not just your current audience. It complements earned media. You can fund earned coverage insights into newsletter narratives.

deepen stories and convert that attention into subscriber trust, and it builds owned engagement. Comments, replies, feedback loops that signal two-way connection. It’s not just broadcast. Now, of course, there are alternatives to Substack. is one, and there are reasons to consider them, but Substack does have first mover advantage in a suite of tool that seems to be resonating with important stakeholder audiences. For PR professionals, brand newsletters on Substack

represent a return to relationship based communication that these changes in social media that we were just talking about have led to. So if you haven’t reconsidered your newsletter or whether Substack fits your audiences, you should. It’s not just for essays or creators anymore. It’s increasingly home base for brands that want to be heard, not just seen.

@nevillehobson (1:16:53)

WordPress to motor but that was a different platform. didn’t didn’t kind of accentuate that. I, I find from what I’ve researched myself even that the the you mentioned. Substack has first mover advantage. Yes, they did. But I’ve noticed that there’s a differentiator has emerged between places like Substack beehive is another one, and ghost of the type of person and what they talk about.

is attuned to one or other of the platform. Substack went through a phase early this year or late last year, I think, when they were accused of being anti-Semitic and they were hosting neo-Nazis and all this kind of stuff. People left them in droves. Many went to ghost. They probably recovered from that. But maybe that’s got a stigma that still surrounds them a bit, perhaps. find the thing that I find interesting too, Shell, about this in the bigger picture sense,

is this to me is like an evolution of blogging, of personal blogging that we had back in the day when CEOs didn’t do this really. And when one did, that was a big headline, when Richard Edelman stepped up. So the CEO of the Edelman PR firm and many others, this fulfilled something similar.

Shel Holtz (1:18:28)

Bill Marriott, remember, had a great blog.

@nevillehobson (1:18:32)

Merritt, absolutely. And of course, way before that, Bill, Bob Lutz, wasn’t it? Bill Lutz, Bob Lutz, General Motors, who was the kind of star writer in the very early days of blogging. The small block engineer used to write about a lot. I remember that. So, but I think the interest in this is the community building, you mentioned. This is not just something you send out, it’s designed to foster community.

And just speaking in my case, as a very tiny example as an individual blogger, I’ve noticed that with the newsletter that has fostered more engagement with readers. for me, what’s interesting is that’s happening more in direct personal feedback from a reader rather than the reader leaving a comment on the site via the newsletter, which is what you’d expect them to do.

I just haven’t figured out why that is yet, but I’m not too concerned because I offer a free newsletter is not a not a monetizable one. I’m not interested in doing that. And I’m gives me insights into the content. The point more than anything, though, is that this is a platform that is attracting more and more people like sub stackers, who traditionally would have potentially not shared stuff or if they did, it was via a blog or on LinkedIn or some other

closed group. Suddenly they are now controlling this on their own domain and building community on their own domain, which I think is an important element in all of this. Even some, I noticed some of the ones that are the handful I pay for. I look at some of the techniques they’re using to monetize, where they’ll offer something that is for paid subscribers only, and they’ll give you like 20 % of it, and you need to sign up to see the rest. Personally, I don’t like gimmicks like that at all.

But nevertheless, I get this is a different landscape than it was back then. So it’s good to see this. I have to say the growth of newsletters that are to do with building community, not just like you mentioned, just sending out an email as a marketing text. These are personal, engaging stories told by people who have a story to tell and do it in a way that people like and they’re willing to sign up for and in some cases pay for it. So I say.

more of this please on any of those platforms because this is what engagement really is about in my book.

Shel Holtz (1:20:52)

@nevillehobson (1:21:04)

Shel Holtz (1:21:13)

@nevillehobson (1:21:26)

Ha

Shel Holtz (1:21:41)

@nevillehobson (1:21:51)

Shel Holtz (1:22:00)

@nevillehobson (1:22:04)

Shel Holtz (1:22:29)

at gmail.com and we would love to play an audio comment if anybody would ever send us one again. We used to get a lot of those.

@nevillehobson (1:23:05)

Shel Holtz (1:23:08)

she’s interested in what we talk about anymore. Mostly Star Trek these days with Chris. Our next long form episode for August will drop on Monday, August 25th. So keep an eye out for that. But we will have short midweek episodes between now and then.

@nevillehobson (1:23:15)

Shel Holtz (1:23:29)

The post FIR #474: AI is Redefining Public Relations appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

It has been more than 60 years since Marshall McLuhan told us that the medium is the message. The decades that have passed since then have done nothing to diminish the truth of McLuhan’s prescient statement. For today’s employees, the medium for most information is the digital interfaces the company provides. There’s an interface for the intranet, for email, for internal social networking and collaboration, for emergency alerts, for calendaring, and for all manner of resources employees need to get their work done.

What message do these interfaces send to employees? If they’re unified, consumer-grade, and make it easy to do the job, the message is one of caring. If they’re confusing, difficult to navigate, and result in frustration, employees can perceive that message as one of dismissal or even contempt. It certainly signals that the company doesn’t care.

Who should own the digital employee experience (DEX)? A number of recent commentaries have argued that internal communication should be at the helm, which may be counterintuitive in many organizations where anything digital is IT’s responsibility. We explore the case for internal communication’s DEX role in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:00)

Shel Holtz (00:07)

And that makes it a communication function. And I’ll explain in more detail right after this. So what do we mean by DEX exactly? The folks at Step 2 define it as the sum total of digital interactions within an employee’s work environment. That includes the tools they use, the systems they navigate, and the way those tools make them feel. Frustrated, empowered, ignored, engaged. The emotional response to the digital workplace matters.

A report from the Guardians Digital Workspace Reimagined series points to research showing that when technology works seamlessly, employees feel more capable, more connected, and more engaged. But when it doesn’t, when systems are confusing, slow, or fragmented, it undermines productivity, it increases burnout, and erodes trust. In other words, all that stuff internal communicators are supposed to be helping to prevent.

For years, we’ve treated tech as the exclusive domain of IT and experience as the domain of HR. DEX occupies a space that’s weirdly in between, but the tools themselves don’t create the experience. It’s the communication that does. As NextThink notes in its blueprint for DEX strategy, digital friction is often the result of inconsistent onboarding, poor internal messaging, or an absence of user feedback.

you know, things that communicators deal with all the time. Let’s consider just a few of the moments internal communicators already touch. Tool rollouts, you teams migration drama, that was all on us, right? Crisis response platforms, knowledge hubs, portals, intranets, resource centers, company-wide surveys, training and onboarding flows, and every digital touch point where an employee needs to find, understand, and act on information.

Those aren’t IT problems, they’re communication problems. And the solution isn’t just better user interface, it’s better communications design. The digital experience is the employee experience these days. Haystack’s research on DEX found that poor search, slow load times, confusing navigation, and content irrelevance are among the top frustrations employees have with their digital tools.

But it’s not the existence of those problems that should concern us. It’s the absence of a communication strategy to fix them. A lot of organizations still treat digital like a delivery mechanism. It isn’t. It’s the environment itself. In a LinkedIn essay, a fellow named Richard Aze, and I hope I’m pronouncing that right. It’s spelled A-Z-Z-A-E, wrote this. said, and by the way, the name of his essay was from baby bottles to employee portals.

He said the communicators need to think like experienced designers. That means looking at every step of a user’s journey, from logging in to locating critical tools and asking, does this build confidence, trust, and clarity? If it doesn’t, it’s not just a bad experience, it’s bad communication. So what do we do about it? Let me run through five quick things that communicators can do to step up and take ownership, or at least partnership, in DEX.

And the first is to get a seat at the DEX strategy table. That means partnering with, collaborating with IT, HR, facilities, and ops to advocate for employee needs. You don’t need to know how to code. You need to know how people feel. Second, conduct experience audits, not just content audits. Where are people getting stuck? What’s hard to find? What confuses them? Look at journeys, not just assets.

Push for user-centric intranet and app design. That means fewer org chart-driven pages and more task-driven layouts. Nobody should need to have to figure out where to go to find the information they need. It should be intuitive. Advocate for feedback loops. ScreenCloud and Populo both stress this. DEX isn’t static. User analytics, sentiment analysis, and real-time feedback are necessary to continually refine the digital experience.

@nevillehobson (04:33)

Shel Holtz (04:49)

But turning this over entirely to IT-Nevel, it strikes me as being no different than turning the design of a magazine over to your printer, which nobody would do.

@nevillehobson (05:31)

in the implementation of this successfully in an organization. And the Guardian has a good article that you had in the links, that’ll be in the show notes actually, talking about how employees feel capable and connected due to good technology and job satisfaction. And so having the right tech. And by the way, your explainer of what is DEX is great. But if you’re in…

the computing industry in some form. If you’re in mobile tech, if you’re in IT, DEX, typically the first thing you see if you search on the term is Samsung DEX, which is, ⁓ no, I’m just looking at it. It’s actually digital experience, sorry, desktop experience. And it’s getting a lot of traction, a lot of visibility at the moment because of the release of all the new

Shel Holtz (06:37)

@nevillehobson (06:50)

that everyone will know that it means a digital employee experience without an explainer, a clarity there to avoid anyone being confused. Say, I thought this was Samsung Dex. Hey, I’ve got crypto. It means this. So just for clarity of meaning. But that’s by the way, it’s a very interesting topic. And I think you set out a good assessment of it and the benefits of it. And I would agree with you. I think though.

I suppose my thought is focused on two things. One is it’s the employee experience. That’s the key part. This enables that to happen. The tech enables it to happen. But it’s not about the tech. To me, said similarly, and we’ve talked about this before, is you know, turn on lights, which are the electricity that lets you do all this stuff. The electricity is not the important thing to you. Might be to the attrition, but not to you. So this sort of

falls in that area, I think. But I would also say that, like many things in employee communication and other elements of organization communication, none of this is done in isolation. It requires the kind of connectivity between different parts of an organization to make it successful. But this is people we’re talking about. So you’re going to get people jockeying for control and all this kind of stuff. That’s inevitable, I suppose. And if you’re really, really lucky,

you will have an IT department to truly understands and recognizes their role is to enable you to do these things for the employees. So I remember, unfortunately, as I suspect you might too, too many that don’t do that. It’s a battle. But this is great. I mean, I think the some of the things in the Guardian pieces was what is in my mind, talk about the obvious things much of what you set out.

You know, it enhances engagement, performance and retention. I those things are the kind of common sense things that you think about. Although the flip to that would be that that requires investment in DEX tools and staff training. And so that’s got to be factored into this thing, too, which I suspect is at the heart of some of the issues where, you know, employee communicators set out a plan that sets up we want to do all this. They didn’t talk to the IT department who would have told them.

To do that, you need these six things and there’s a hundred thousand dollar budget required for that. So you need to talk to each other. Each party needs to be open with each other about plans and not focused only on, don’t want those guys interfering. This is my domain and I’m going to make sure I control that, which is what happens. So I think the pros and cons of this, or the pros in particular, are pretty self evident. You’ve outlined most of them, think, Shell. So it’s an interesting thing that

this gap between the tech side and the employee communications, I still seems to exist in organizations today. And I find that really disappointing.

Shel Holtz (09:56)

@nevillehobson (10:09)

Shel Holtz (10:19)

It’s just the interface that we’re getting. And the fact that it makes it difficult for employees to find and use information is absolutely problematic. And I think that’s a communication challenge. That’s a communication issue. As I say, we controlled the design of the print publications. We, in most cases, controlled the design of websites.

as we created those for our organizations. The service certainly didn’t do the design for you. Some of them may have had contractors that they worked with who would do it for a fee, but they understood that a designer was necessary for that. And I think it’s just defaulting to IT to create the interface for the various

digital tools that employees use to access and use information. And I really think that a partnership with communication would improve that. And most of what I’m seeing in the research and this surge of content about DEX and the communicator’s role in it seems to support that. So I guess what I’m suggesting isn’t that you go to war with your IT department. It’s that you…

@nevillehobson (11:55)

Shel Holtz (11:56)

@nevillehobson (12:03)

to present that and what to ask your IT colleagues. ChatGPT will be a great tool to use for this to construct your case that you make to discuss with them and you have a discussion with them. And if you’re lucky, you’ve got a colleague on the IT side who has similar mindset thinking of how to go about this and you’ll coincide and things should be quite smooth, right?

Shel Holtz (12:51)

@nevillehobson (13:02)

Shel Holtz (13:17)

@nevillehobson (13:20)

And that too often isn’t the case. mean, I remember not recently, within the last year, let’s being in a company talking about a project we were working together on, they just happened to observe looking around their office and everyone had these clunky old, I you could tell the thick laptops with huge like two inch bezels all around them. I mean, that’s late 90s even, you know, it’s really ancient technology.

And people always complained there about these slow networks and getting IT support was a nightmare. So they had a big problem with that, which is where you get people doing things that, you know, they’ll wait till they get home to work on documents because they got a better computer at home. And now, of course, that isn’t the case. There’s no there’s no but but nevertheless, that’s still a big expectation of people that they expect the tech to match the quality of their personal tools because most people have good quality personal tools.

Shel Holtz (14:34)

mobile app. now we’re in the process of driving adoption of it because people aren’t in the habit of checking mobile for their internal communication needs other than maybe email. But the people who start using it have reported really liking it. And it’s because it’s as good as what they’re accustomed to using for external purposes. So it really does matter. That’s part of that digital employee experience.

@nevillehobson (15:23)

Yeah, DX.

Shel Holtz (15:28)

The post FIR #473: The Digital Employee Experience is the Message appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

New research reveals that B2B decision-makers have increasingly recognized the importance of trust. The study also showed that companies that measure trust as a board-level KPI are over three times more likely to report more substantial profits than those that don’t, yet only 22% of companies state that trust is a board-level KPI.

In this brief midweek episode, Neville and Shel analyze the data and explore opportunities for communicators to enhance organizational trust.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:01)

@nevillehobson (00:08)

the space between what customers, clients and partners expect from brands and what those businesses are actually delivering. That gap has real commercial consequences, reduced loyalty, slower growth, weaker brand equity and ultimately lost revenue. So what can businesses do about it? The report outlines five key pillars of trust, competence, reliability, integrity, intent and communication, all of which can be measured and managed. It encourages businesses to treat trust

as a board level priority, not an afterthought. What’s interesting is that these pillars combine both rational and emotional dimensions. Trust, after all, is as much about how people feel as it is about what they know. And in B2B settings, where buying decisions are complex, involve multiple stakeholders, and carry career level risk, trust becomes a critical shortcut to action. There are clear parallels here with Edelman’s 2025 trust barometer.

which painted a similarly stark picture of declining institutional trust, anxiety about misinformation and widespread concern over AI. In fact, Edelman reported that 85 % of respondents to their survey worry about losing their jobs to AI. The FT and IPA report picks up that thread and takes it further, showing that while many companies are adopting AI, very few business decision makers actually trust the content it generates.

Just 9 % of those surveyed said they trusted generative AI. And 92 % said that if a company misuses AI, would have a profound negative impact on their trust. What emerges is a strong case of putting trust back at the center of how we plan, communicate, and lead. For communicators, that means treating trust not as a reputational buffer, but as a long-term asset, something to measure, manage, and embed across every part of the brand experience.

When I first looked at this report’s findings, I thought that surely there cannot still be such a trust gap as we’ve been talking about trust gaps for years. Clearly there’s still work to do and questions to answer. Here are two. What role should communicators and marketers play in closing the trust gap? And how can we align intent and action in a way that actually strengthens trust rather than erodes it? Shell, thoughts?

Shel Holtz (02:57)

@nevillehobson (03:06)

Shel Holtz (03:22)

For communicators, there is a lot that we can do. And in fact, we may be the drivers of this in some organizations where it’s not already being taken seriously. And I have to tell you where I work, it’s already a board level issue. And there are task forces and committees that have been convened.

by people at the highest levels of this organization to identify the things that drive trust, both internally and externally. There are actually separate committees looking at each of those. There have been surveys and studies, and it is based on the recognition that trust is a driver of business. There are jobs that we win that we are convinced that we are winning, not only because we submitted a great proposal.

but because we have worked with a client before and we built trust on the previous engagements. And that’s why we tend to hammer this idea of every opportunity you have to build trust with a client on a project, you do that because that’s going to help us maintain that client and get that repeat business. But if you’re in an organization that’s not taking that approach, that is not

dealing with trust at that board level, I think it’s up to the communicator to point out why it should be a board level issue or an executive committee level initiative to connect the dots between that trust gap, which can also be looked at as an integrity gap. If you look at the definitions, I what is the definition of trust? I remember in that IEBC Research Foundation study,

I think they said that the simplest definition of trust is the belief that somebody will do what they say they will do. Comes down to that. What is integrity? It’s that say do gap, right? I say one thing and do something different. If there’s no integrity, there’s no trust. So I think elevating this issue to that senior leadership level so that they start to see it as a strategic imperative and as an asset.

an intangible asset. We’ve had intangible assets before, reputation and goodwill have both been counted as intangible corporate assets that are factored into a value of an organization, say during an acquisition. So yeah, the start is making sure that the leadership of the organization takes it seriously and then it’s driving it into the organization, sharing examples, making sure that

People understand when you won business the role that trust played in winning that business and in equipping employees with the information, the knowledge, the tools, and the resources that they need to understand how to build trust both internally and externally. This should be top of mind for every communicator and every organization.

@nevillehobson (06:46)

But only 22 % of the companies surveyed for this particular port track trust at a board level, only 22%. There’s some other really interesting elements just to mention in the context of what you were saying there, Sheld. The trust gap is widening is one that struck me as kind of interesting. Particularly industries they cite, finance, insurance, tech, cybersecurity and property show the largest gaps between expected and delivered trust.

business news media ranked highest for trust outperforming all other sectors, including retail and utilities. Trust is a critical commercial advantage. We discussed that right at the outset here. It ranks as the second most important factor after product or service quality, driving business performance, sales, profit and acquisition. It’s now used as a marketing effectiveness metric in the IPA’s effectiveness data bank, having climbed from sixth to second place.

over 20 years. There’s others. Human connection still matters. This I found most interesting. 69 % disagree that trusting technology is the same as trusting a human. That’s an interesting one. Only 9 % of the respondents said they trust content generated by generative AI. 92 % said misuse of AI would profoundly impact trust. Those were highlight numbers that I mentioned in the introduction earlier.

I could kind of riff on this for quite a long time, Shell. some really interesting stuff here. Media context affects brand trust. I found that finding quite interesting. Gatekeeper media, as they describe it, example, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, significantly boost perceived trustworthiness of advertisers. That makes complete sense to me. Trustworthy. 60 % said they are now more likely to trust a brand when advertised in trusted media.

only 14 % trust UGC platforms with their personal data versus 75 % for FT. That is most interesting to me because they more likely trust a brand when advertised in trusted media. So that would say, I would say if you’re looking there at social network platforms that are jockeying for attention, dollars and growth compared to traditional media, puts those in the distrusted media bucket straight away by that definition.

X being the prime candidate. I mean, you look at this, you can see some clear signs of where you need to pay attention to. And this overall picture of trust, I think the interesting thing is, and this to me is linked to the board level KPI interest of what trust means to them. We are in a climate, a huge climate of exceptionally big distrust and indeed mistrust.

exemplified by which you see across every aspect of science of human society, of those in positions of power and influence to set the examples are not doing that. And we can think of a handful of business people who we could say, you know, no wonder trust is down the toilet with people like you in charge of things. Your behavior is affecting that.

So trust is multi-dimensional, it goes on to say. Again, there’s lots more here, but I think in terms of what communicators need to do, the report talks a lot about what businesses can do. And indeed, that’s quite appropriate in the level of detail they go into. Our interest is really on the audience for this podcast, the communicators, and what they need to do. So

It’s something that this report concludes by saying, treat trust as a core competence, we’ve kind of checked that one, some companies doing your company being an example, prioritizing. Right, right.

Shel Holtz (10:52)

being a plank of the strategic plan. So I mean, don’t know how much more seriously you can take it.

@nevillehobson (10:59)

you got it. And so you’re you’re a standout example. No question. Prioritize ethical, reliable communication. And that I don’t know why people struggle with that, Shel. I sense many, many people, many communicators struggle with that because it’s not kind of enshrined in what the company says they’re about. But that doesn’t matter. You know what you need to do in that context. I think that’s how I would see it. Choose trusted media strategically.

Embrace AI responsibly with clarity, measure trust and the game measurement. We talked to Richard Bagnell a couple of weeks ago in an interview about the Barcelona Principles 4.0 and this whole area of measurement and evaluation of communication. And there you have something there. Measure trust and act on what it tells you. that, yeah, I mean, what more can you say to that? So there’s

I think much clarity here in the level of detail the supports go into to dig out the nuggets of things that are quite easy to say, OK, fine, here’s my list of takeaways I want from this, and this is how I’m going to execute on this. And that, to me, is a good way to start if you’re not doing it already.

Shel Holtz (12:10)

@nevillehobson (12:12)

Shel Holtz (12:36)

outputs that you are creating for say your advertising or your marketing or other communications are authentic and trustworthy. I’m not gonna suggest the tactics for that. It would be different for different organizations and based on the kinds of outputs that you’re producing. But having that culture of trust would say, okay, we need to come up with a way that will serve our audience as they are evaluating

the trustworthiness of this content. And yeah, it could be just the long-term building of trust that you’ve undertaken. It could be resources that you point people to where they can see how this is done. And of course, the better you get it using generative AI, the harder it’s going to be for people to say, hey, that’s generative AI. I don’t trust that. I have this conversation all the time. If you can tell it was written by AI, was

poorly prompted and inadequately edited after that.

@nevillehobson (13:55)

There’s a lot to take away from the Shell, think. A to pay

attention to. There’s lots of communicators who can grab at here that are easy to understand and digest. And I would argue not that difficult to see how you could execute on something from this report as part of your own approach to creating a climate trust in your organization.

Shel Holtz (14:20)

The post FIR #472: The Evolution of Trust appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

There’s a new brand of influencer. Faceless creators wield their influence while never appearing on camera, while VTubers — virtual YouTubers — employ AI-generated avatars instead of showing their faces. This is no flash-in-the-pan trend. One network of faceless creators grew from 5,000 to 21,000 creators in just three months, with some raking in as much as $40,000 per month from brands eager to add their content to the mix. There are numerous reasons this shift is happening, from social networks like TikTok elevating its algorithm over follower counts (enabling someone with few followers to see a post go viral) to the ability for brands to pay for performance instead of impressions. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at the pros and cons of faceless creators.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:00)

Shel Holtz (00:07)

So let’s start with what we’re actually talking about. Faceless creators publish videos and clips without appearing on camera. Affiliate network grew from 5,000 to 21,000 faceless creators in just three months. Top performers are pulling in 30,000 to $40,000 a month from brand deals. Man, I’m in the wrong line of work.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Many of these faceless creators are students or part-timers running multiple accounts, posting hundreds of pieces daily, some of them posting as many as a thousand posts per day. They’ve cracked the code, if you will, on algorithmic discovery, understanding that in the attention economy, volume and optimization often trump polish and personality.

Three forces created this explosion. First, have platforms like TikTok that have deprioritized follower counts. Algorithmic feeds boost engaging content regardless of creator size. A faceless account with zero followers can reach millions of people. Second, AI democratized production. You can call it AI slop, but text to video bots, AI thumbnails, multilingual dubbing, mass content production is now scalable by one

person who’s got the right tools. Third, performance-based compensation. Creators are getting paid on views and conversions, not flat fees. Brands can experiment at scale without upfront investment. VTubers, virtual YouTubers, use AI avatars and motion capture to create remarkably human personalities. Blue, and it’s spelled B-L-O-O, has millions of subscribers and seven-figure revenue.

It editing, thumbnails, and multi-language dubbing.

Brands aren’t just attracted to the novelty. They want autonomy, cost efficiency, and creative control. No scheduling conflicts, no scandals, no contract renegotiations, just consistent on-brand content at machine speed. This isn’t just about marketing. It’s also organizational communication. Scalability and ROI are becoming non-negotiable, but authenticity trade-offs are real. The lack of a human presence raises questions about trust in

and alignment. Best practice is emerging though, and that’s to blend human content with virtual elements, have virtual influencers interact with real people, or introduce faithless content through recognizable human voices. The most successful organizations embrace new formats without abandoning the human elements that build trust.

Mass production can border on manipulation. AI generated content poses authenticity challenges we’re only beginning to understand. When virtual influencers promote products, are consumers aware they’re engaging with AI? What transparency is required? These aren’t abstract questions. They’re practical challenges communicators have to address now before regulators step in with solutions that could stifle innovation. So what does this mean for organizational communicators? First,

First,

experiment, but do it strategically. Explore faceless formats and AI-assisted production, but anchor everything in your organization’s values. Second, maintain trust. Use hybrid models, faceless clips introduced by named team members. Embed real testimonials and human voices. Third, measure performance. Shift towards CPC, leads, click-throughs. Test faceless versus traditional content to understand what works in your niche.

And finally, lead on transparency. Disclose AI-generated content, avoid misleading impressions. In a landscape where trust is fragile, transparency isn’t just good ethics, it’s good business. Now, the bottom line here is that the rise of faceless creators signals content as productive, scalable, and detached from identifiable faces. This isn’t replacing human storytelling, it’s complementing it. The organizations that will thrive will blend deficiency with authenticity,

scale with soul. Whether your voice is faceless, virtual, or distinctly human, it needs strategic alignment and authentic connection. The question isn’t whether to embrace these formats, it’s how quickly you can use to learn them effectively while maintaining the trust that great communication requires. And by the way, Neville, just yesterday I read an article that didn’t specifically call out faceless creators, but it made a point that this type of content that the faceless creators are

producing is something that you actually don’t need a creator to do. You can do it in-house and a lot of companies are starting to bring some of that work back in-house. So an interesting trend.

@nevillehobson (05:26)

Shel Holtz (05:39)

@nevillehobson (05:56)

promoting the individual who is the creator through to promoting what has been created. So if it’s about a brand or it’s a theme or something topical, that’s what you see and hear, not a talking head or some person who’s the prominent focus. It’s the actual message. That’s the thing. So that’s one of the reports I read say that is emulating TikTok.

to a certain extent. And I think fine, if this is a trend, then this does add a new dimension to the content that you will encounter in various places online. You mentioned the Vtube. I think it’s great. Vtube, the virtual tube. it’s super. Faces, creators and Vtubers. E-Marketer says they’re redefining the creative space. I can see it.

My only worry is is precisely going back to concerns about AI slop is that this therefore makes it easier to to literally deluge everything with slop. But you have to also accept, as I do, that one man’s slop is another man’s venison steak or whatever you might want to describe it as. So it’s like all things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just think, though, that this is likely to open the floodgates to

to AI generated content of dubious quality. It’s a bit like whenever I turn the TV on during the daytime, which sometimes happens at lunchtime, I want to see the TV news and rather than see it all online all the time. That’s when it seems to me in the UK that it’s poor quality slop all over TV at that time in terms of advertising. The ads you see,

are usually about cremation services, pet insurance, or other things that niche audiences might want. Insurance for seniors, how to pay for your funeral ahead of time, all that kind of stuff. That scripting is dire. Clearly, I’m not the target audience, although I’m probably in the right age bracket for that. But you’re now seeing this likely to be the case online too. I think, though, you mentioned something quite interesting, that it opens equally another avenue.

to user generated content within organizations. So VO, you mentioned VO3. But again, I raise the question to myself more than anything that does that mean we’re gonna see more dubious quality content coming at us in waves that you can’t ignore it everywhere? I noticed things a lot on LinkedIn, Facebook in particular, and luckily they have a way to say, us about this ad.

And I said, don’t want to see that anymore. It’s just dreadful. And it goes away. I think I can’t see that lasting that long, to be honest. your exposure is diminishing in quality. And this will accelerate that because it’s already diminishing in quality, arguably, certainly on LinkedIn. So will this also kickstart, perhaps, explorations and experimenting by real influencers online into niche communities?

away from the slop. Who knows? But nevertheless, I agree with eMarketer in particular, because they mentioned quite clearly, this is absolutely a trend. It’s gaining momentum. It’s been around a while. Now seems to be the time for this to pick up steam. One of the other links you shared from Axios, an interview with Jim O’Leary, the CEO in North America of Weber Shandwick, the big ad agency.

that he says, he talks about five things, the attention economy, creator economy, stakeholder economy, experience economy, intelligence economy. I mean, these are all great things, but they’re all being not led, but pushed along fast by influences and influence. So this then is taking that in a different direction. So

Basically, what I see from all of this and from the links, the reports that you shared, and your own assessment of it all, is that this is upon us. You could say if you don’t pay attention to it, you’re going to be overtaken by those who do and that probably is a valid point to make. I would argue too, though, that you only need to pay attention to it if this is something is value to you, your brand, your messaging, everything. That said, though, if you say no, it’s not, then you do risk being overtaken because

I don’t think you can say no it’s not. You have to explore how it is and realize that this is upon us. So it is an interesting time. I just hope we are not overwhelmed with the slop though.

Shel Holtz (10:48)

about

that. In terms of the AI slop, I think we’re going to be experiencing a deluge of that whether there are faceless creators or not. On the one hand, you hear about the one creator who’s cranking out a thousand pieces a day. On the other hand, if you’re get paid for this, you’re gonna have to get impressions. And that means it has to be something that people are gonna wanna look at. And I don’t wanna minimize

@nevillehobson (11:28)

Shel Holtz (11:45)

@nevillehobson (12:07)

Shel Holtz (12:08)

@nevillehobson (12:12)

Shel Holtz (12:35)

And they tell you that the entire commercial, which looks incredibly professional, was made with Google’s VO3, the entire thing. So it is very likely that we’re going to see high quality content coming out of this space. It’s not all slop just because it’s coming from AI.

@nevillehobson (13:01)

not. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s not all slop. Of course it’s not. That’s absolutely right. I agree with you that it’s likely to be that way. So this is upon us. There will be good things amongst all the slop, but we’ll see more slop. There’s no question about that. I just wonder, though, you mentioned the guy who’s cranking out a thousand pieces of content every day. I’m reminded of our conversation with Craig Silverman recently about

people who do that in the mobile phone farms out in Southeast Asia with workarounds to get around the limits imposed by platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to limit you to a certain number of posts. This breaks all those limits. So I doubt respectable agencies like Web of Shamwick are going to be doing that kind of thing. But nevertheless, that’s going to be part of the landscape too, because therefore you’re going to have people breaking all the current rules. If your brand is associated with a rule break,

don’t think you want to go there. So it may force some changes there, I suspect. So it would be a good thing, I’m sure.

Shel Holtz (14:03)

@nevillehobson (14:08)

So

the argument then is it may be legal, but is it moral? mean, that’s how the argument’s going to go, or ethical, know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it’s an interesting development.

Shel Holtz (14:19)

what that that creator is doing. But yeah, I find it fascinating and certainly something worth paying attention to as this landscape just continues to shift. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of for immediate release.

The post FIR #471: Can You Be Influential and Anonymous at the Same Time? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Copyright challenges and intellectual property issues are consistently recognized as a serious, top-tier concern when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI). It may not be the top concern — that’s usually related to fake news and the trustworthiness of content, followed by privacy concerns — but many creators are upset and worried about the integrity of their work when it’s used as fodder for new training models. The courts will inevitably weigh in — in fact, one already has, with a federal court ruling in Anthropic’s favor, asserting that its use of authors’ books without compensation constitutes fair use due to the transformative nature of what Claude, Anthropic’s LLM, does with them.

More lawsuits and more rulings are indeed coming, and legislation and regulation are also likely. However, Creative Commons has always preferred a voluntary compliance approach, grounded in a logical framework. In 2004, Creative Commons (under the guidance of Lawrence Lessig, a prominent American academic, attorney, and political activist known for his work on intellectual property law, campaign finance reform, and the social and legal implications of technology) developed such a framework that allowed people publishing on the web to designage how others could use their content. (This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution/share-alike license.)

Now, Creative Commons is proposing a similar approach to AI, with a framework that would empower creators to signal their preferences for how their content is used and reused. The nascent framework is currently open for public comment. In this brief, midweek episode, Neville and Shel examine the proposal and the role communicators can play in shaping its final form.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:01)

@nevillehobson (00:08)

that enable creators to share their work and use that of others legally and openly. This new project is their response to the rise of AI and the vast amount of public web data being used to train AI models, often without clear rules or consent. We’ll explore CC signals in lay terms and what it means for communicators right after this.

For more than 20 years, Creative Commons has enabled millions of creators to share their work while retaining rights through open licenses. But now with AI models scraping the internet at scale, there’s a new challenge. How can content owners set clear expectations for whether and how their work should be reused by algorithms training AI models? That’s where CC signals comes in. It’s a proposed framework that lets data set holders express preferences

for how their content can be reused, for example, in training AI based on legal, technical, and ethical guidelines. In simple terms, dataset holders means any individual organization or platform that owns, manages, or has control over a collection of data that could be used to train AI models. Rather than locking everything down behind paywalls or blocking bots entirely, CC Signals offers a middle path, a way to sustain the open web

by encouraging responsible AI use. It’s built on values like recognition, reciprocity, and sustainability, echoing the same ethos that shaped creative comments copyright licenses two decades ago. For communicators, this matters. First, it’s a story about the governance of knowledge, how it’s shared, who benefits, and what kind of AI future we want to support. Second, it’s an opportunity to engage with new norms to advise organizations on data sharing policies

and to help shape a framework that could become foundational in the age of machine learning. CC signals is not just a technical tool, it’s also a social contract built on fairness and the shared benefit of respect for creators, clearer norms for AI developers, and more sustainable access to open data for all. The framework is currently in very early development. Creative Commons is gathering public feedback and input now, aiming for an alpha launch in November 2025.

We’ll have a link to the website in the show notes. So, Shell, I think this is worth taking part in shaping and developing new tools, new norms, and new forms of cooperation for the age of AI.

Shel Holtz (03:07)

is licensed under Creative Commons. So I think they do really good work. Remember, the core principle behind the Creative Commons concept was that it has to be a defensible case in court. You can’t just say this is a thing and then have somebody violate your license, take them to court and have it thrown out. This is valid legal underpinnings that they have.

with the work that they do. So I’m really happy to see them doing this. Of course, it’s not the only initiative of its kind out there right now. The Authors Guild has one called Human Authored Certification. It’s supposedly a certification system for authors and publishers to label books and other written works as human authored. There’s a U.S. Copyright Office initiative on AI. There’s an open letter from authors to publishers.

and various licensing and regulation proposals, probably the most interesting recent development in all of this is Barts versus Anthropic. This was a case in the US where a judge granted summary judgment in favor of Anthropic over the question about whether using copyrighted books to train its large language model constitutes fair use. And the court said, yup, it does. It’s quintessentially transformative.

offering a potential shield for AI companies facing similar copyright challenges. So the legal system is already weighing in and how owners of content in a system. And I think it’s really fascinating that Creative Commons acknowledges that AI needs this content, that AI needs access to all of this material in the open web and copyright.

needs rethinking in order to accommodate this. What did they say? think I wrote it down. Ideas, facts and other building blocks of knowledge cannot be owned. Expanding copyright to control AI training risks stifling innovation and access to knowledge. The future depends on shared expectations and responsible use. And then they go on to say, of course, that any viable solution needs to be legally grounded, technically interoperable and backed by the collective action of humans.

@nevillehobson (05:44)

Shel Holtz (05:58)

This might be the answer for a lot of people. We’ll have to see how it shakes out. But you’re absolutely right. Way in.

@nevillehobson (06:33)

they, Creative Commons has published a project page that summarizes it all. They say for the technical detail, click here, as it were, and you can then go to some and really get down a rabbit hole in the technical aspects of this. But for us normal folk, communicators, we need to understand it more simply. And this is why it’s worth having this conversation today about this, I think, to kind of say, you said something interesting because this might be in my view throughout too. I started using Creative Commons myself back in 2004.

literally when they started. And like you, everything I share publicly with anyone that I’ve added my intellectual property to carries a Creative Commons license. One of the beauties of CC licenses is that the thing you normally confront straight away when you come across one is written in plain English, literally no legalese. It’s at pains to point out quite clearly that that’s not the contract. You need to read the legal one.

And they have published a variety of different types of contract back by legal definitions of the terms they’re using and how it all is supposed to work that are valid in different legal jurisdictions. So it’s not limited to one jurisdiction. Like you mentioned, what’s going on in the US, that’s US law only. This is valid in many other countries. In fact, the one I use is an international license that is valid in multiple countries. So if…

This leads to something like that. That, I think, would make it very attractive. But the simpler it is to understand and use, the more likely it is that it will get pick up. Like you, I’m disappointed that Creative Commons copyright licenses never really rocketed into the stratosphere as it seemed they might. There were some notable lawsuits, legal challenges, 2000s.

that ⁓ didn’t really kind of gain the headlines that it might have done, I suppose. But it showed that these test cases that you could, it did have the legal teeth behind it all. So this though, like I said, this is ⁓ in the development stage and it does present, I believe, a great opportunity for communicators to help shape the development of this. So not all the techies are in there, it needs that.

And that’s where we step into the thing too, because you can help shape the framework that could become that foundation that I mentioned earlier. So it’s a great opportunity.

Shel Holtz (09:34)

@nevillehobson (09:42)

Yeah, that’s right.

In Amsterdam, yeah. He won it.

Shel Holtz (10:03)

beyond commenting, is it possible to band together? I’m thinking of the Venice pledge that came out of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications. This is the umbrella organization that represents most of the communication associations in the world, IEBC, PRSA, CIPR, CPRS.

all of those ⁓ organizations belong to the Global Alliance. And they just a couple of weeks ago released the Venice Pledge, is there, and they’re asking communications professionals and companies in fact, to sign onto the pledge. And it’s a set of principles around ethical use of AI. So I’m wondering, is it possible for the Global Alliance to weigh in on this representing?

⁓ all of the communicators out there as opposed to or in addition to everybody going in and sharing their own comments.

@nevillehobson (11:28)

to so so so they totally could do that. Someone representing that global alliance goes there, clicks that link, starts a conversation there. But I think you’re absolutely right. And that bring it back to the Creative Commons Copyright Alliance is maybe that was one of the issues behind its lack of mega stardom, as it were, that there wasn’t this kind of thing going on at the time. But that was a different era here. Everything’s online and everywhere. When this is huge about what the

pros and cons are of all this. So ⁓ they would be a good candidate in light of the Venice principles, which I think you discussed that in a previous episode, A monthly, I think you raised that. So, right. So ⁓ that must be relevant to this. ⁓ So this is definitely the moment for this because it’s early stage. They’re looking for feedback. They want suggestions. They want input from anyone who cares to suggest these things.

Shel Holtz (12:08)

@nevillehobson (12:28)

Shel Holtz (12:29)

@nevillehobson (12:33)

The post FIR #470: Creative Commons Proposes an AI Copyright Solution appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

A growing body of research suggests employees are more disconnected than ever. What are internal communication teams getting wrong? Also in this long-form monthly episode for June 2025:

In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at Mastodon’s updated terms prohibiting AI model training, announcements from TwitchCon, and the impact of Texas’s mandatory age verification law on Internet privacy and security.

Links from this episode:

Links from Dan York’s Tech Report:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:02)

Shel Holtz (00:13)

Definitely some challenges facing the world of associations in general and IABC in particular. But as usual, the content at the conference was excellent. There were some really good sessions on things like driving AI adoption in the organization presented by ProSci, the change management research organization with some really revealing data, some very interesting stuff. For example, Neville, the

number one driver of adoption of AI in an organization is the very visible and vocal support from the most senior leadership of the organization. That’s the top factor. And in a lot of organizations, those guys don’t have a clue what this is or how it

@nevillehobson (01:18)

Opportunity for communicators, would say that signifies Shell.

Shel Holtz (01:29)

@nevillehobson (01:43)

But we started with the topic on AI. Not only are AI chatbots still hallucinating, we said by some accounts it’s getting worse. And we had a conversation about LLMs and hallucinating and so forth also in that episode. A handful of other topics too, including one I’ve been reading even a more about in the past week or so. So Google’s new tool for making AI videos with sound following the one with text, that’s VO3.

these seem to be coming out of the woodwork from a variety of players mid journey, most recently this past few days. So expect to hear us talking about it on FIR during the course of July, I think.

Shel Holtz (02:37)

@nevillehobson (02:51)

Yeah.

There’s around a dozen such tools currently, according to who was at the verge, if I recall correctly. And I’ve heard of half of them. So new things are appearing left, right and center. The mid journey one just a quick aside, I coughed up some money just so could try it. Blimey, I tell you, this is extraordinary. That you upload a static image and it creates a five second video from that you just prompted a bit.

or not as you as you prefer it’ll do something. And I’ve done a poor about half a dozen of these that I’m going to stretch together into a single video I saw a couple on LinkedIn to people doing similar things. So for 10 bucks a month, it’s worth it to discover what this can do. So expect to see lots of silly stuff out there. But there’s a great learning for what everyone else is doing. So it’s definitely another phase in these tools.

Shel Holtz (03:43)

I have a Mid Journey account. haven’t tried that yet, but you’ve been able to do that on PyCo, which I’ve been paying for for a while. So it’d be interesting to see how it works on Mid Journey. Yeah.

@nevillehobson (03:50)

Sure, there are a number of tools that you could do that.

This one I’m seeing in the tech press is saying, wow, over this particular one. So it’s offering something, I suppose. Go and give it a shot. So we also talked in this episode, this is a bit of a kind of a roundabout way to get to what we talked about in the last monthly. We talked about a new global alliance report on lack of strategic leadership about AI’s ethical use. AI again.

Shel Holtz (04:01)

@nevillehobson (04:18)

Shel Holtz (04:33)

@nevillehobson (04:45)

dedicated entirely to AI, 304 slides, not the most slides she’s had as a deck. One of her internet ones was 600 slides, substantial content. But this is worth a read. We talked about it. She has credibility, as we said in the show, credibility as strong as hers is likely that this report will become the defining source of truth about the state of AI. So it’s definitely worth taking a look at the report and

listen to that episode to get our take in what she had to say. And then finally, 468 published June 17th, new threats to reputation. We said, while a company’s reputation doesn’t appear as a line item on a profit and loss statement on a balance sheet, it is nevertheless a critical intangible asset that significantly influences financial performance and long term success. So in this episode, we looked at some recent research.

and reports to zero in on the newest reputation challenges and how communicators should face them. So you’re up to date now with that little wrap up.

Shel Holtz (06:12)

@nevillehobson (06:15)

and he explains how he does all that. He explained how indicator came to be the challenge of launching a media startup and what kind of impact he hopes to achieve. He also shares practical insights for communicators facing the growing threat of coordinated inauthentic behavior, fake reviews, and AI generated information very timely. That was a good conversation. Almost three quarters of an hour, we talked to Craig about that and it was some really good insights he shared. So very much worth a listen.

Shel Holtz (07:10)

@nevillehobson (07:12)

Right. And you might,

if you know of Craig, you might remember back 15 years ago, he published a website that was called Regret the Error, pointing out errors made in media reporting that led to a book deal. And I’ve got the book. It’s nice, a nice look back in time to see what that was all about. But that was a good conversation we have with Craig, must admit.

Shel Holtz (07:47)

Yeah

Also published since last month is episode 117 of Circle of Fellows, the monthly panel discussion with IABC fellows and a moderator, also a fellow, usually me, sometimes Brad Whitworth, talking about a topic of interest to communicators. This one was different. We did this one live at the IABC World Conference. We had…

three of the five new fellows up on stage. The other two weren’t able to make it. And then we had eight fellows in the front row of the audience. So we had a camera aimed at the stage. I was at the lectern and the three fellows in chairs. And then Brad was out in the audience with a microphone and his wife, Peg Champion, was following him around with a camera.

And all of this was feeding into StreamYard, which we used to do Circle of Fellows. And I was able to do the camera switching seamlessly. And this was all questions from the audience. So it wasn’t on a single topic. We went an hour talking about issues that were on the minds of communicators. It’s really interesting episodes. So that’s available both as a podcast and a YouTube video.

We’re also preparing for episode number 118, returning to the usual format. This one’s on communication leadership. The panelists include one of our brand new fellows, Mike Klein, along with Robin McCaslin, Sue Heumann, and Russell Grossman. This will be at noon Eastern time on Thursday, July 17th. So if you’re interested in hearing the perspectives of some senior communicators on leadership and communication,

Tune into that or catch the video or audio replay later. And with that, it’s time to turn to our reports as soon as we pay these bills.

There was a time when digital was something you bolted on to your PR efforts. Neville, you undoubtedly remember those times where should we do something digital? Should we have a website to go with this? I remember when TV commercials had URLs appearing at the bottom and it was, wow, look at that. They’re showing their URL on a TV commercial. PR now is digital. mean, calling it digital PR is almost ridiculous.

It’s just at the center of how we communicate. And BuzzStream’s latest state of digital PR survey is out. And if you’re wondering where the industry is headed, this year’s survey pulled in answers from 150 digital PR pros across the globe. I guess that means there are PR pros who are not digital PR pros, which is a little worrisome, but there’s a lot of food for thought here. So let’s start with the basics.

What’s working in digital PR these days? The clear winners are data-driven hero campaigns and good old fashioned expert commentary. It turns out about 95 % of the professionals out there lean on these two tactics. You need both the big attention grabbing home run campaigns and the steady reliable singles. And Neville, I apologize for the baseball metaphors. I don’t know the equivalence in cricket. ⁓

@nevillehobson (11:14)

Shel Holtz (11:18)

72 % also say it’s gotten more challenging at the same time. If that feels like a paradox, it is. Blame it on everything from industry layoffs to Google’s never-ending algorithm updates to the growing army of competitors in the digital space. Basically, the pressure cooker has been turned up to 11. Now, what about budgets? It’s not exactly a free-spending landscape. Most digital PR teams are working with less than $10,000 a month and

Only a handful, about 4%, have more than $20,000 to play with. The cost per link, which is how a lot of these teams still measure value, typically stays under $750. Here’s something interesting. A full quarter of respondents are generating 40 or more links per month. If you’re into link building, that’s a pretty solid haul for your money. And interestingly,

link building is still at the heart of most of these digital PR campaigns. So what does success look like in digital PR? It is still all about the links. Not just any links, quality links are more important than they’ve ever been with 87 % of PR pros saying that’s their number one metric. Tools like RF’s domain rating and Moz’s domain authority are the go-to yardsticks for measuring those links.

And when it comes to relevance, two thirds of practitioners say they check the page title when the link appears. Little detail, sure, but one that says a lot about the evolution of the craft. Patience remains a virtue. Around half of those surveyed say it takes three to six months to see meaningful results from a digital PR campaign. For some, it’s even longer, think six to eight months before you really start to notice the uptick in authority or referral traffic. If you’re in a hurry,

Digital PR probably isn’t for you. Follow-up emails deserve a quick mention here. A massive 98 % of respondents say they send at least one follow-up, and the data shows that it pays off. Sending a follow-up boosts your reply rate by 85%. So consider that a best practice. The best results come when you follow up within a day. Open and reply rates both peak right after the first message. Now here’s why all this matters.

Digital PR isn’t just about backlinks anymore. It’s about driving organic traffic, raising brand visibility, sparking social buzz, and even helping organizations weather a crisis. Done right, digital PR delivers a kind of surround sound effect for your organization. One campaign, multiple touch points. The big takeaway in 2025 is that digital PR is harder than ever, but also more rewarding.

It’s also about mixing hero campaigns and expert commentary, following up quickly, measuring what matters and above all, being patient. Because if there’s one thing this year survey makes clear, it’s that digital PR is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. The other thing that occurs to me, Neville, and I think where we’re probably going to end up talking, is it’s all still about referral traffic to drive folks to a website. And we know that’s on the decline because of AI. And I was…

really struck that they’re still talking about success in terms of backlinks and not a word about showing up in AI search results. So Neville, what was your take on this study?

@nevillehobson (15:15)

It’s PR, right? And you talk about digital channels, isn’t that a bit of a misnomer now, because everything’s digital. If it’s defined by the channel, that makes less sense to me, even more so. So I think in the report early on, they asked, they have a little section called expert opinions, a little drop down, where one of the questions at the start was, how does digital PR compare to traditional PR?

And the quote I liked, and you’ll understand why in a second, is from Will Hobson, hi Will, US VP of PR, Rise at Seven. He says, the lines are getting more blurred, but in my opinion, digital PR is just PR. Our activity needs to be brand relevant, but also culturally relevant while being closely tied to business objectives. Now, you can apply that to PR, and I agree. So we haven’t moved on from…

not calling it digital PR, which emerged when all this was kind of new about 15 or so years ago, where we had digital PR. And I always had a problem as well with digital marketing, where you slap the word digital in front of a job description or a job title or some kind of activity, and it sounds super cool and new and fresh and amazing. We need to stop doing that, because if you then look at these definitions, so the Digital Marketing Institute says,

Digital public relations is a strategy used to increase awareness and visibility of your brand using online channels. That’s the first part of it, to which I would say, but isn’t that what PR does? Let’s call it traditional PR for differentiation. Isn’t that what PR does? Digital PR is similar to traditional PR, they say, but it offers the opportunity to reach more people in a measurable and targeted way. I don’t know what that means, but that doesn’t make sense to me either.

I’m not going hang up on this because I’m not, but it just struck me is that we’ve to stop calling it digital PR. I think your point, though, to kind of focus on this major issue is that exact one about links driving traffic to websites and so forth. I did think that they had the report show some interesting aspects related to SEO that are very much in the the dane of

domain of this is how we’ve always been doing this. This is not new. So that makes sense to me. The syndication, no follow, I found interesting. But I guess the main point is, though, if we’re going to call it Digital PR for the purposes of this article, I’m OK with that. When you get into some of the kind of slicing and dicing of what they came up with, which teams do you work with more closely if you’re in Digital PR?

And that I didn’t find surprising that the number one by huge number was SEO, the folks who do SEO, followed by marketing and then PR. So traditional PR is third on your list of people you work closely with. Surprised me a bit to see in this result that strategy was way down the list. And I would have thought that if you’re gonna, know, surely we’re talking about being strategic.

to, well, not to coin a phrase, of course, but I hear that all the time. But I would have thought that would have been higher. And it, you know, I could slice and dice this, but I don’t think that would add to our conversation. I think there are things we can learn from this survey, without doubt. But to me, it was obscured by this thing about digital marketing. And I think things are moving so fast that the kind of feeling I get from some of this

is that this is not on top of these changes that are moving fast. And I’m thinking in particular about what you and I have talked about in a variety of episodes of this podcast over the course of this year on things like Google Overviews, the role of AI in all of this that is going to interfere with all of these traditional sounding plans, it seems to me. So the future, according to this, to my mind, doesn’t look very rosy as changes upon us. And this doesn’t look like it’s addressing change.

Shel Holtz (19:18)

The old line being when the bear is coming at you, you run, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other campers, right? ⁓ But as I think about the term digital PR, I guess I can see the distinction in the respect of PR as being a reputation management and relationship building activity.

@nevillehobson (19:47)

Shel Holtz (20:06)

I think what we’re talking about with this is outreach, right? And when we’re trying to get our message out, so PR messaging is all digital these days, but there’s a lot of relationship building and reputation building that doesn’t happen online. It happens over the phone, it happens face to face. So I guess we could say that’s the distinction.

@nevillehobson (20:57)

Shel Holtz (21:03)

@nevillehobson (21:21)

leaves your pitch. So these kind of narrow definitions to me are obscuring the value of these activities and dressing them up with a word that is wholly unnecessary. So Will Hobson’s got my vote where he says he doesn’t think this is, we should not call it that, we just call it PR.

Shel Holtz (22:05)

I don’t disagree. I am thinking back to an old, old case study. This was when, I can’t remember who was behind it, but there was a call to boycott the tuna industry, the canned tuna, because of the inadvertent dolphin catch that was happening. were scooping up dolphins in the nets and dolphins were dying.

@nevillehobson (22:10)

Shel Holtz (22:30)

in the sweep of tuna. Look at our numbers, look at our tactics, the things that we have implemented as procedures to avoid this. And the group came back and said, okay, yeah. And they went out and said, boycott tuna, except StarKiss, they’re already good guys. That was negotiation. That was getting people at the table. So today, communicating the outcome of that would clearly be digital, but the actual effort

@nevillehobson (23:12)

Shel Holtz (23:21)

@nevillehobson (23:27)

Shel Holtz (23:33)

@nevillehobson (23:51)

Social media overtakes TV as the main source of news in the US.

Shel Holtz (24:16)

it social media? It’s all just media. ⁓ just…

@nevillehobson (24:19)

right? I I’m as guilty as everyone for calling it social media. Indeed, I often talk about social media marketing. So, is it just marketing? mean, it’s okay. my God. Yes, absolutely. So this story I’m going to share is actually kind of a subset of a huge report from the Reuters Institute, the latest global report that was published actually just literally a week or so ago.

Shel Holtz (24:30)

@nevillehobson (24:47)

compared to 50 % who still rely on TV. Now, I’ve been hearing for a long time that, you know, more Americans get the news online than anywhere else. This seems to provide clear evidence of that perspective. And it comes from a highly credible source at the Reuters Institute. I found the reporting, which I’m referencing by the Guardian was really good at summarizing the whole thing in a way that helps me discuss it with you rather than all the huge chunks of data that’s in Reuters report.

But this isn’t just a shift in platforms, it’s a shift in power, according to The Guardian. Influencers and podcasters, not journalists, are increasingly shaping what news gets seen and heard. Joe Rogan, the famous American podcaster, alone reached more than a fifth of Americans in the days after Trump’s reelection. mean, a fifth of Americans? That’s got to be in the least, what, close to 100 million, if not more, people.

especially among younger men, a demographic traditional media often fails to reach. That shift brings both opportunities and deep concerns. Trust and transparency are now front and center, as news increasingly comes from personalities rather than publications. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are starting to become news sources themselves, particularly among under 35s, yet users are already questioning their accuracy and reliability. There’s also a darker undercurrent.

Globally, news avoidance is rising fast. In the UK, nearly half the population say they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether. And I tell you, I’m in that group. It’s the highest figure in the study, that UK statistic. Many feel overwhelmed by negativity or simply tune out from what they see as repetitive or irrelevant coverage. In my case, it’s both in this context.

So as a center of gravity shifts from institutions to individuals and from owned newsrooms to algorithm driven feeds, what does this mean for trust, for civic awareness and for the role that communicators like us still have to place to play? What do you reckon, Cheryl?

Shel Holtz (27:16)

is so much to unpack here. Let’s start with the fact that people are avoiding the news. I just heard an interview Kara Swisher interviewed Nicole Wallace on her podcast, On with Kara Swisher. For those who don’t know Nicole Wallace, she was the press secretary for President George W. Bush. She worked in the upper echelon of the John McCain presidential campaign.

@nevillehobson (27:18)

Shel Holtz (27:41)

of news on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, wherever you prefer to go. And it’s an assault of nonstop distressing stuff. She has, Nicole Wallace, started a new podcast through MSNBC. And it’s not 100 % news. It’s interviews with A-listers just about whatever they want to talk about. She said it always…

finds its way to some news, but it’s not news from beginning to end. And people are hungry for that. And that’s one of the reasons they’re turning off the relentless assault of news and opting for either something that has less of it, is more entertaining and soothing and comforting, or presents the news through a filter that is equally comforting in their bubble.

Interestingly, as you mentioned, a fifth of Americans listen to or watch Joe Rogan. I was reading that he is turning away from Trump lately in his commentary in the episodes where he is political because he’s not always, but that’s going to be an interesting thing to watch to see if he wields the kind of influence that can sink the poll numbers even lower than they are.

But you mentioned using AI tools for the news. I do that, not exclusively, but ChatGPT has the ability to set up tasks. And I have set up tasks to get the latest news on trends in elements of the industry where I work. And every day I check and every now and then I find something really, really interesting and good out of that.

@nevillehobson (29:48)

Shel Holtz (29:51)

go to these other sources for news. And frankly, know, watching MSNBC or CNN or Fox is the same. The only way I find out what’s going on in the rest of the world is to watch the BBC. That’s where I find out what’s going on in the Sudan, for example, or in Colombia, because they don’t cover that on the cable news stations in the US. They’re laser focused on

the four or five stories that are going to gin up the most outrage among the audience right now. So it’s all the current politics and that’s what’s turning people off. And I think if the media wants to maintain an audience, they’ve got to figure out how to bring people back, how to make these more palatable because what’s missing is the gatekeeper. And I understand that people don’t like the idea of the gatekeeper. I can pick for myself what I’m interested in.

But if somebody isn’t saying this is important and you need to know about this, this is what was great about reading a newspaper, the old fashioned newspaper is even if you weren’t that interested in the story, you saw the headline and you knew what was going on. Maybe you read the lead and now you knew what was happening in that part of the world that could have an influence on you and your life at some point in the future. Because when you are curating the news,

by following the TikToker who presents the stuff in a style that entertains you, what aren’t you hearing about that you should be hearing about? And somehow we need to get back to having somebody who can curate what’s important. So at least you have a superficial knowledge of what’s going on beyond what’s in that bubble.

@nevillehobson (31:54)

Shel Holtz (32:07)

Well, exactly.

@nevillehobson (32:20)

So Joe Rogan, as I mentioned, according to this report, he reached 22 % of Americans that week, as I mentioned after Trump’s inauguration. But I’ve read also separately, he himself has been critical of some of the people out there who are so-called sharing news and stuff like that. So is this a generational thing that I say to myself? I suspect it is largely. But the challenge for

or for all of us, I suppose, are the shifts in the platforms. So there’s some statistics from Reuters, YouTube at 30%, Instagram and WhatsApp at around 20%, TikTok 16 % are major players in news dissemination. X is losing liberal users and gaining right leaning ones. There’s no surprise there. But that again, that that has a big impact on this big picture. The challenges of publishers, according to Reuters,

struggling to adapt to video-driven and personality-led content, struggling to adapt to it, not dismissing it or combating it. They’re really struggling with that. Losing commercial value and visibility on platforms they don’t control. Facing a bypass of scrutiny as populist politicians speak directly to people through influencers. Now, that is definitely something that we’re seeing a lot happening over here in Europe, certainly.

News avoidance, we just discussed that, is rising. 40 % globally, at least sometimes, are avoiding it. That’s up from 29 % in 2017. So in five years, 29 % to 40%. That’s a big rise. So the interesting thing I find about the emerging role of AI, to your point, you mentioned that younger users are turning to chat bots like GPT, chat, GPT, Gemini, forgetting the news, not setting up a program that delivers a news to you.

but actually getting the news from those chatbots. I do that occasionally, but I don’t say, I’m done, I’ve got my newsfeed. No, no, no, I’ll do it for something specific where I want the benefit of either perplexity, which was good at this, or I’m not using that so much anymore. Gemini’s most interesting how it’s doing this is finding stuff that I know enough about my own use of those platforms that generally speaking, and this is a very general comment,

I trust what chat GPD tells me, not blindly. Let me tell you that I check most things, not every single thing. But if I’m getting something that I’m going to make use of in some form, I will double check it myself. And I have encountered recently a couple of things where it’s made a mistake. So what do we call that hallucination or whatever? And I’ve challenged it and said, you’re absolutely right. Thank you for pointing that out. I made a mistake. I get that just like a human being might do. So that’s how I tend to regard it.

But this is something that…

Shel Holtz (35:26)

fewer mistakes than humans undertaking the same task would make. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than we are.

@nevillehobson (35:35)

well, that’s probably true. So I think that’s a that’s a good way to approach it that many of the critics I see about chat GPT notably don’t seem to do it this way, which is to be literally you think of your AI assistant as a person as a colleague you’re working with, and you’re asking it to do a task as you would a colleague to do or a hired contract or whatever it is that you’re doing. Don’t just say to yourself, this is just a program doing stuff. Think of it that way.

And when you challenge it, don’t worry too much about, you know, working for hours on getting a prompt, talk to it conversationally. I do that all the time. And it works well, I find. But this is, this is a useful report. And the reporting I’ve seen not just in the Guardian, but elsewhere that zero in on particular aspects of this are worth paying attention to. And I think the one thing I would say that

you could argue is not emerging anymore. It’s kind of with us. There’s concerns that persist about the accuracy, trust, and transparency in AI-generated news. And that’s something we need to pay close attention to, not to circumvent it or think, now, no, it’s there. That is part of the landscape. So if the younger users, according to surveys like this one, are turning to this, we’ve got to understand that.

and make changes according to our planning and be part of the changes that are happening and the shifts that we are seeing right in front of our eyes. That’s what we need to do.

Shel Holtz (37:01)

And that means identifying the influencers, the podcasters, getting stuff on YouTube so that people will find it, making it easier for people to find. And getting into those AI-generated search results. Interestingly, I’ve heard recently that the AI-generated search results, particularly the Gemini overviews or the Google overviews, are heavily dependent on Reddit and Quora.

both of which are other sources that people are going to for news. And these are not places where you can just post your news. You have to go in there and engage. So another opportunity for a strategic shift in the communications department.

@nevillehobson (38:10)

Shel Holtz (38:12)

basic PR strategies, they’re expected to anticipate political and cultural turbulence and shape organizational strategy accordingly. The study makes it clear that CCOs are now business drivers, not just messengers. In volatile contexts, think fractured politics, rising cultural tensions, corporate affairs leaders are being brought into the room to offer strategic counsel. They’re expected to flag risk.

convene cross-functional war rooms and guide public positions. As Ben Kalovich from United Mains puts it, with an audience of one in DC that can and will quickly strike, CCOs need to lead their organizations to make the right decisions. That’s a weighty responsibility and one that requires a shift from reactive communications to proactive leadership.

In companies that embrace this new model, the CCO serves as a kind of stabilizing board voice, a steady hand while other leaders overreact to daily political noise. Interestingly, that’s kind of what the Melbourne mandate called for, what, 13 years ago from the Global Alliance. They called for PR to be at the center of maintaining that steady guidance through political turbulence and social turbulence.

Anyway, the organizations set up frameworks, monitoring political signals, introducing decision protocols, and convening diverse teams early. And the result of this is anticipation of contentious issues like DEI or AI regulation and the ability to respond with unity and credibility rather than scrambling under pressure.

Not every organization is embracing this shift, though. In more traditional companies, communications is still seen as downstream messaging. Boards and CEOs may say they want early risk warning, but when the CCO raises a flag, they end up getting marginalized. As Dave Tovar of Grubhub noted, CCOs are caught between expectations, knowing they should warn but lacking authority to influence outcomes. Picture it.

telling the company the winds are shifting but not being allowed to change course. This tension between leadership resistance and expectations creates a double bind. Leaders may resist expanding CCOs remit, preferring to keep them in a PR silo, but then when political or reputational risk escalates, they demand answers. The CCO is stuck, expected to prevent or manage a crisis but without the platform or agency to do it.

That gap undermines both credibility and governance and risks turning strategic warning into a career killer if leadership ignores it. We’ve seen indicators that the pressure on CCOs is rising. A recent Axios survey reported a 10.5 % turnover rate among global CCO roles in 2024. That’s up from 8 % the year before. Why? Because these roles are expanding and not every executive ready or empowered

to lead with that level of complexity. A lot of these folks are hired for the moment and then find themselves lacking when volatility demands broader strategic competence. That signals a growing divide between what companies want and what communicators are equipped or intend or invited to deliver. So for CCOs navigating this evolving role, there are a few paths forward. One, step into the advisory space.

Build political risk frameworks and cross-functional coalitions before these crisis emerge. Second, map your internal networks. Engage peers in legal, government affairs, HR, trust and influence are built pre-crisis. And finally, translate your role. Reframe your value not as PR, but as strategic insight, especially to boards and CEOs. But if none of this sticks, leadership…

both expects and empowers, reducing resistance has got to be an area of focus.

@nevillehobson (42:47)

This goes much, much deeper than that. And I think it’s not new, the depth of this, but in the context of where we’re at today with all the things that are going on in the world that could, well, not so much could impact us, but that we ought to be paying attention to because this is the world in which we are doing business and living. Political risk is a business, is a valuable…

attribute for somebody to be able to provide guidance and insight to leadership on in a way that they are trusted by those leaders to do that. So if you want to get a seat at that table that we hear about as a trusted advisor, this is a route. But it’s complicated, really is high risk and what you outlined the reality of human behaviors and the ways in which we engage with others in a work environment.

be marginalized, you’ll be sidelined, you will not be supported, you’ll be sabotaged, all that stuff, if you don’t do it right. And that sounds a pretty trite way to say it because it’s wider than that. But you need to have all your ducks lined up. You’ve got to have support. You need to have that network to support you. And you need to show your value in supporting others. I this is a diplomat’s role as well. I think I don’t know anyone. Just going through my mind, I know a number of

people with the CCO title in large corporations as well, but not anyone I could think of who I could say, yeah, this person will be a role model for this kind of role. doesn’t mean to there aren’t any, I just don’t know any at the moment. But I think this is a natural evolutionary step for a CCO in a large enterprise in particular, particularly in a, let’s say controversial to some industry, pharmaceuticals comes to mind, actually armaments comes to mind, although that’s probably a…

a hot one to be in that right now in that you don’t need to try and persuade customers to buy your products. But the way in which you are able to navigate the political risk is key. you know, I couldn’t offer more than what I just said, Shell. I think it is a it is a fascinating topic to be discussing, given the context of where we’re at in the world.

Shel Holtz (45:08)

is going to affect us negatively if we don’t get on the right side of it or if we don’t communicate it effectively with key stakeholder audiences, they’re going to do what they want to do. And I imagine that’s a tough place to want to be strategic in terms of what this report is talking about.

@nevillehobson (45:53)

But that’s what you’re probably going to have to do, I would say.

Do you to say thanks to Dan? I see, I should just notice he’s uploaded it now to…

Shel Holtz (46:29)

I’ve already downloaded it, but clearly I haven’t listened to it.

You’re up next. Do you want to say? no, I’ll do it. then then we’ll.

@nevillehobson (46:44)

Shel Holtz (46:53)

Thanks for that report, And also, Dan, congratulations on your job change. I don’t know, Neville, if you heard about this, but Dan is now the chief of staff to the head of the Internet Society. So just big shout out. That’s a tremendous move and congratulations on that.

@nevillehobson (47:10)

So let’s talk about something unusual and increasingly important that’s happening at the intersection of faith, ethics, and technology. At the second annual Rome conference on AI held last week at the Vatican, attended by executives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, and more, Pope Leo XIV made a bold call. AI must be developed within an ethical framework that upholds human dignity, not just innovation for its own sake.

He’s positioning AI ethics as a signature issue of his papacy, something that’s been widely reported in some of the mainstream media, notably the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago. He’s doing this in the same way Pope Leo XIII, so one number less than what Pope Leo XIV is and some hundred years in between, once defended factory workers during the Industrial Revolution.

But this time it’s not about wages or working hours, it’s about what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines. Crucially, he’s not rejecting technology, he’s confronting its unregulated ambition, warning against the illusion that access to data equals wisdom, and calling attention to the risks to children’s development, justice, and even spiritual well-being. What stands out is how Pope Leo is reframing AI, not as a technical or economic issue, but as a spiritual and societal one.

He’s using the church’s global moral influence to challenge the Silicon Valley narrative, especially the idea that salvation might one day come from code rather than grace. And this brings us as communicators into the frame. As I explored last week in a post on my blog, referencing a deeply analytical report by the Wall Street Journal, we have a strategic role to play here, not just translating complex technologies, but interpreting what they mean for people and society.

We’re often the ones asking the hard questions about trust power and impact inside organizations. So when the Vatican calls for ethical restraint in the face of AI’s rise, it’s not just a headline, it’s a reminder that we too need to help shape the values that drive technological progress. The church is offering one model of how to do that through moral clarity, digital diplomacy, and deep reflection on human dignity. This is not just a church versus tech story.

It’s a lesson in how moral authority, strategic dialogue, and long-term vision can influence how the world adopts powerful technologies. Communicators can draw on this in multiple ways, elevate ethical concerns internally, lead with principles, not just performance, and frame AI not as a product, but as a public conversation about who we are becoming. The Vatican is showing that digital diplomacy doesn’t require dominance. It requires clarity, conviction, and credible values.

Shel Holtz (49:53)

@nevillehobson (50:09)

Shel Holtz (50:12)

@nevillehobson (50:19)

Shel Holtz (50:38)

@nevillehobson (50:52)

Shel Holtz (51:03)

that represents the world’s public relations and communications associations. They represent close to 400,000 communicators worldwide. IEBC is a member, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations is a member, most of the world’s associations are members. And they have just released the Venice Pledge, so-called because it was hammered out.

in Venice. In fact, they say it’s result of a collaborative AI symposium workshop session held in Venice, Italy, hosted by the Global Alliances European Regional Council in partnership with Therpy, the Italian Federation of Public Relations as part of the Global Alliances Technology Trends and Communication Transformation Month in May. This was signed by the board, passed by the board in July.

Let me read this just so everybody can understand what they’re saying here and see how it aligns with what Pope Leo is saying. The Global Alliance defines responsible AI as the ethical, transparent, and human-centered development and application of artificial intelligence strategically deployed to support, not replace, human judgment, creativity, and communication. It emphasizes accountability, fairness, and accuracy while minimizing

bias, misinformation, and harm. Responsible AI upholds privacy and data protection, reflects professional and organizational values, and ensures proper attribution, governance, and human oversight to maintain trust, integrity, and societal well-being. The seven responsible AI guiding principles are ethics first, human-led governance, personal and organizational responsibility, awareness, openness, and transparency, education and professional development,

active global voice and human centered AI for the common good. And they are asking communicators to sign the pledge. We will have a link to this in the show notes. And if this is something that you agree with, by all means, give it a click and sign the pledge. It’s fairly benign. I don’t see anything particularly controversial there. It is though, think entirely aligned with what Pope Leo is saying and very much at odds.

with the US government’s approach to AI, along with the approach being taken by most of the big players in the industry.

@nevillehobson (53:52)

hitherto people who are highly critical of what they are saying. So big tech in particular and continuance of a let’s call it digital diplomacy that started around 2020. So five, five years ago under Pope Francis that has led to meetings with the leaders of all the big tech companies that the big six, I suppose you could argue if not including some others, I’m sure.

And this meeting recently that I mentioned is another step forward in that journey where they’re looking to, I guess, illustrate the value of principle dialogue. Although I think it also highlights the limits of voluntary codes and the need for firm accountable governance. And that’s the bit that I think is going to be the critical one. Can Leo as the head of the Catholic Church?

move the needle on that, where we have a lot of talk around the world about regulation, for want of another word, and various things happening, but that hasn’t really moved any needles yet. But I think Pope Leo is going to be a far more tech savvy, regulation minded voice than his predecessor, who was not.

as informed. Both pontiffs shared a deep concern that I’ve read a lot about that, that innovation without ethics risks eroding the very dignity it promises to enhance, and that’s their starting point. So communicate, as you and me and all the others listening to this can help bridge that gap to increase the understanding of that. But I think the fact that the Vatican is

is taking this, it’s certainly not news headline making everywhere, but increasingly I’m seeing reporting on these steps that the Vatican is taking. So as I mentioned over the past decade, actually, they’ve held private meetings with tech leaders. So Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Brad Smith, Eric Schmidt, and others more recently. Many took place under the umbrella of the Minerva dialogues. That’s another grouping of meetings that took place privately.

convened by a number of very influential voices, senior church leaders in the Vatican, and they’re continuing. And they moved from, reportedly, from enthusiasm about connectivity to deeper concerns about AI. So you’re seeing a convergence meeting of minds on certain aspects of this. So concerns about AI, misinformation, polarization, and this phrase I plucked from a Vatican report, the nature of truth.

I thought, they should get Donald Trump in there then if you want to talk about the nature of truth. Vance would do, I suspect. But the point to me, though, is that I think this is a massive shift in possibilities over this broad topic that everyone in the whole world seems to be struggling with. And yes, we can have pledges. Like you, I think from what you said, I’ve not read it myself, it doesn’t seem to be anything in there that would cause a conflict to anyone.

you’re pledging that you would follow these things and you are likely, in fact, I can’t imagine anyone is going to say no to that. Anyone you’re to take seriously and say, no, I’m not going to follow these things. Of course you are. But that’s not, well, he’s not a person in our circle of conversational focus even. But I think what we’re talking about here is a sea change that is only just emerging into the public space. And it’s

Shel Holtz (57:17)

@nevillehobson (57:34)

That’s a pledge that Microsoft, IBM and Cisco have signed and that was launched in 2020. That laid out the principles of transparency, inclusion and responsibility. But one thing I found interesting, Charles, Google and OpenAI have not signed it, not yet. So that highlights the unresolved tension between tech autonomy and ethical oversight. So there’s a hurdle to get over at some point. But shaping global discourse.

This is something I remember this Pope Francis, he spoke at the 2024 G7 summit warning of a technological dictatorship and calling for legally binding treaty on AI governance. The 2025 G7 meeting in Canada has just happened. No news about that. But I think Pope Leo undoubtedly is going to carry that mission forward. But here’s the thing. Firmer, more technically informed posture. He’s going to talk like he knows the topic he’s talking about.

So these to me are converging into something quite interesting. Symbolic and narrative power is another one. And this pope is very savvy on all of this. So for instance, referring back, you remember this, I’m sure you will. AI generated image of Pope Francis in a white puffer coat went viral in 2023. It exposed the public’s vulnerability to deep fakes and the church’s symbolic visibility in digital culture. But rather than dismiss it as a joke,

Pope Francis used the moment to amplify concerns about truth, trust, and the limits of data, which is an example of value-led narrative shaping. So all these elements are happening. So I think Pledge is great. And I think it’d be good for other professional bodies to either support this as a single initiative or come out with their own. Where is the harm in doing this? It’s not affecting anything that’s going on here. think it’s, let’s not forget.

This is aimed at a wider societal grouping as opposed to narrow demographics, let’s say. But this to me is a very interesting time and we are seeing the possibility, I believe, and there’s me with my always my glass half full view of a big change happening that can only be a good thing.

Shel Holtz (1:00:10)

@nevillehobson (1:00:13)

Shel Holtz (1:00:36)

@nevillehobson (1:00:42)

we had a year or so back about, we don’t need code of ethics for AI because we’ve got a code of ethics. And I think this illustrates actually why we do need something specific for AI. ⁓ Exactly.

Shel Holtz (1:00:53)

so routine and is just a part of life. But right now, yeah, I agree, especially because of the risks that we’re seeing. I still in my heart believe that if you read IEBC’s code of ethics, PRSA, CIPRs, it’s all covered there, but it’s not explicit, it’s implicit. And right now what we need is for things to be explicit.

@nevillehobson (1:01:00)

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s lots for communicators to absorb in all of this. So if you’re interested in the devil being in the detail, there’s the we’ll have links or there are links in the show notes for this episode for that Wall Street Journal piece I mentioned, it’s lengthy, extremely deeply analytical. It’s behind a paywall, unfortunately, but there are probably ways you can get into it.

There’s also a linked article I wrote about my blog, which I found rather fascinating. It was from the Catholic Health. I’m not a sudden conversion to reading religious publications, by the way, but in the focus of my interest, I’m encountering these stories. But they had an interesting analysis of transhumanism. Now, I have a number of deeply Catholic friends whose eyes rolled when I told them about this story, because this to me is a major issue for the Pope to grapple.

grapple with where transhumanism, if I understand it correctly, is all about. It’s not salvation you’re going to get from a God when you die. It’s likely to be from computer software and software engineers or the new priests. mean, that’s the take I’m reading from the Catholic Herald’s article. I don’t agree in any shape or form with that. But it’s nevertheless, it’s a point of view. And that’s part of the conversation too. So you got to take care of that. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes if you want to read it. But

Wall Street Journal piece, this piece, CNN article, which is talking about the meeting that just happened this past few days. And then of course, there’s our conversation. there’s a lot to unpack from this. And if you have comments to share, we definitely want to hear what you think.

Shel Holtz (1:02:48)

@nevillehobson (1:03:06)

That’s right. You’re absolutely right.

Shel Holtz (1:03:15)

@nevillehobson (1:03:16)

goodness.

Shel Holtz (1:03:39)

place is sapping productivity, its undermining culture, and frankly costing companies a lot more than they realize. So let’s talk for a couple of minutes about the hidden costs of internal disconnection and what smart strategic internal comms leaders can do to close these gaps. Let’s start with a stat that jumped out at me from a recent Axios HQ report, a stat that gets right to the heart of one of the biggest problems I see with what internal communicators do every day.

The data says employees lose more than a month of work every year just trying to find information. Clarifying confusing updates or waiting on other people to respond. We’re talking about 41 work days per year per person. Do the math and that’s about $20,000 in lost productivity for every employee. All that time chasing down answers or trying to interpret vague emails adds up.

And let’s be honest, this is not just a minor nuisance. For most organizations, it’s a massive silent drain on resources and much of it’s preventable. So what’s the fix? It starts with clarity and consistency. We need to deliver the right information at the right time in the right way. That might mean tighter, more concise updates. Maybe it’s a centralized digital hub where people know they’ll find what they need.

Maybe it’s just making sure leaders are trained to write and speak with a little more empathy and a lot less jargon. But it also means that internal communicators absolutely must start devoting some of their attention to how communication happens within the organization between other people and between departments and functions, not just the formal messaging between leadership and employees. When was the last time a communicator that you knew did a process audit to see what messages are being sent?

by processes. This ought to become a key area of focus. Now, the same Axios report had another stat that’s alarming. Eight out of 10 employees say the quality of internal communication affects how well they understand company goals. But only about 9%, that’s just one out of every 10, feel they’re fully aligned with those goals. That’s not just an internal comms problem, that’s a business problem.

If people aren’t clear on where the organization is headed or why it matters, how can we expect them to bring their best to the table? And if internal comms isn’t about alignment, I don’t know what it’s about. Here’s where internal communicators can make a real difference. And I’m not talking about an all hands meeting or a CEO memo. Short frequent touch points from leadership, weekly what’s important notes, town halls that actually allow employees to ask questions.

And maybe most important, managers translating those big picture goals into the realities that their teams face every day. Now let’s talk about frontline workers, people in retail, healthcare, logistics. Fast Company shared some eye-opening findings from a WorkVivo study. Nearly half of frontline employees don’t even know who their CEO is. This is just staggering to me, although based on a personal experience, it’s not all that surprising.

When I was running communications at Mattel, we did quarterly CEO town halls, but only for manager and above because we didn’t have a space big enough for everybody. And I convinced leadership that let’s do a second one. And they said, okay, we’ll bring all the people from below manager into the other one. So they weren’t going to be mixed groups, which is what I had in mind. And so they had the second town hall.

The CEO got up, did his dog and pony show, same thing he had done for managers and above. And afterwards, a group of admins walked up to him and they were just so effusive. They said, this is so wonderful. It’s so great to be included. We never get to hear this stuff. We understand so much more of what we’re hearing about. Now we just have one question. Who are you? He didn’t introduce himself. He assumed.

@nevillehobson (1:08:09)

Shel Holtz (1:08:15)

So what can communicators do? Well, for starters, we have to get creative about reaching people who aren’t sitting at a desk all day. More mobile friendly platforms, digital signage, even a quick weekly video from the CEO specifically for the frontline. And crucially, two-way communication channels, places where frontline employees can get, ask questions and get real answers. Now,

Here’s a twist, and I apologize, I know this is a longer report, but there’s a lot of this stuff happening out there. According to a recent piece from the New York Post, Gen Z employees, those just starting their careers, are shying away from office small talk. In fact, three out of four say they struggle to strike up conversations with coworkers. It might be tempting to chalk this up to generational differences or social anxiety. I think it’s deeper than that.

As more work moves online and hybrid, those water cooler moments, as we’ve talked about frequently in the past, aren’t happening organically. And that’s a problem because informal interactions is where trust is built and where silos are broken down. Internal comms can help here too. Can’t force small talk, but we can create spaces for it. Slack channels for non-work chat, virtual coffee breaks or interest groups, let people connect over something other than deadlines.

We just launched a new intranet. It has communities, and I made a point of setting up some communities that are not work related. Share pictures of your pets. We have one that somebody set up about video gaming, and this is where you’re going to have the opportunity for those kinds of interactions and for people to meet. Then there’s the infinite work day. This is a term that came out of Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, and it describes a world where work bleeds into evenings and weekends.

especially for remote and hybrid teams, Gallup reports that millions of employees are stuck with unpredictable schedules, making it hard to find work-life balance or plan family time. Role here for internal communicators too. We can model and promote boundaries, publicly acknowledging that it’s okay to log off at a reasonable hour and celebrating leaders who actually do it.

We can make sure employees know about resources for mental health and wellbeing and check in regularly through pulse surveys or just simple, are you doing moments. And we can recognize how different employees from different generations perceive this issue, especially given the micro targeting of employees that’s increasingly possible with AI. For example, I learned at the IAVC World Conference that Gen Z is not millennial 2.0.

They’re not interested in work-life balance. They’re interested in work-life blend. That seems to me to necessitate a different messaging to millennials than we’re sending to Gen Z. So all of these issues share in common symptoms of disconnection to information, to leadership, to each other, to the mission of the company. That’s why internal comms isn’t just a nice to have and why we have to stop resting on our laurels.

We are the nervous system of the organization and when it breaks down, everything suffers, productivity, culture, retention. So my challenge to communicators who work in the internal comm space, audit your channels and messages, who’s being reached, who isn’t, and what’s getting lost in translation. Design your strategy for real inclusion, not just efficiency.

make it two-way and make sure that the voices of the frontline and Gen Z and everyone in between are actually being heard and measure your impact. It’s not about how many emails you send, it’s about how much time and confusion you save.

@nevillehobson (1:12:27)

The question my mind listened to was, OK, fine, this is all great. What do you do? How do you do this in a hybrid workplace? Meaning work from home sometimes, work in the office other times, or as we hear occasionally, there’s some companies where some people don’t go in at all, others where the climate is forcing people to go in, so the environment is not a good place. I read on LinkedIn and I didn’t bookmark the person who posted this, unfortunately.

But Mark Reed, the CEO of WPP, the advertising agency speaking at South by Southwest in London last week, said, he talked about hybrid working in the future of the workforce with AI, blah, blah, essentially said people are happy when they’re in the office. Which, which which I’ve seen people commenting. I’ve seen people commenting on what I mean, are you nuts? Are you stupid? Or what? You know, is it without any any any explainer, as I understand it, nothing to say here’s the data that supports that view.

Shel Holtz (1:13:34)

@nevillehobson (1:13:48)

Shel Holtz (1:14:02)

what, are you nuts? How’s it possible to align with your CEO when your CEO is making statements like that?

@nevillehobson (1:14:07)

Yeah, yeah. mean, PR week has a good thing about it. If you subscribe, it’s behind the paywall. And the link in the LinkedIn piece that I saw wasn’t to that. It was to something else, but I’ve not been able to find it. I’ll see if I can. But the fact disconnect is the right word because everything you talked about is about disconnects. And if we sort of know what they are, surely it’s fixable, right?

Shel Holtz (1:14:33)

They are disconnected from things they want to be connected to because they’re not being provided with the information, the data, the resources to be connected. This is serious connection really needs to be a focus for communicators right now.

@nevillehobson (1:15:11)

Yeah, and that plays into everything we’ve talked about over the last months, particularly starting with Edelman’s trust barometer, trust in organizations, trust in leaders of organizations diminishing. And this adds to that, particularly if, I mean, I can picture it, Shell, a large organization that has people out in the field or in factories or whatever it is, they’re not at a desk, so they’re not going to be exposed to easy communication.

you need to build that in. It reminds me of something I did when I was working at Mercer in the early 90s with a client. It was a company called Marion Merrell Dow that was in the pharma business. They had a sales force who were completely not getting any of communication that employees got. So we developed a kind of radio station for them and recorded stuff that was mailed to them on cassette tapes. Because these are sales guys in cars, they could put the cassette tape in the cassette player in the car.

That’s analog stuff for you. But surprisingly, to me, I recall highly effective communication based on surveys that we did. But that idea was bold at that time for that company, the industry they were in. It requires, in my view, just using that as purely as an illustrative example, requires boldness to change these things in an organization. That to me is something that is squarely within the realm.

of a communicator to do something about it seems to me. there’s, you know, there’s a not a roadmap exactly, but there’s a plan that you could see what you need to do. So why not do it? Easy as pie, right, Shell?

Shel Holtz (1:16:53)

@nevillehobson (1:16:55)

highlights the growing use of agentic AI by influencers. We’ve talked about agentic AI before, but just briefly, agentic AI is AI systems that don’t just respond to prompts, but acts with autonomy, engaging people in comments and DMs using the creators voice tone and even catchphrases related to this particular story. The result is that creators are seeing real gains, less burnout, more responsiveness, and deeper fan engagement. Agentic AI is redefining online interaction.

helping creators stay present without being overwhelmed. But says Digiday, there’s a cost. Advertisers are growing cautious with some now adding clauses to influence a contracts to ban AI generated content altogether. The concern is that AI, no matter how well trained, could undermine the authenticity of the relationship between creator and audience or even misrepresent the creator, especially in sensitive brand context. And then there’s the ethical dimension.

As agentic AI starts to simulate personality and build relationships, how should we think about its role? What happens when fans form connections with a chatbot, even if it sounds just like the person they follow? Despite concerns, creators argue that AI interaction has improved their relationships with fans, made them more responsive and enhanced engagement metrics, qualities brands still value. Still, communicators are now in new territory, navigating contracts, brand trust,

and audience expectations all at once. It’s no longer just about producing content. It’s about managing relationships that may now be co-authored by machines. Which brings us to the larger point. As AI becomes a co-pilot in content and conversation, how do we define authenticity? How should brands and communicators navigate this new hybrid territory? What do you make of that show?

Shel Holtz (1:19:09)

@nevillehobson (1:19:12)

Shel Holtz (1:19:33)

@nevillehobson (1:19:38)

Shel Holtz (1:19:59)

said it was 100 % hand drawn in the old Warner Brothers style, the Fritz Freling, Chuck Jones style of animation. And we said, cool. And we watched it for about a half an hour and we looked at each other and we said, the animation is incredible. It is just like it was in the 40s and the 50s. And it is just amazing. The movie is terrible. It’s not.

funny, it’s stupid, it doesn’t have any of the wit and charm that, or the grown-up humor that you turn to Warner Brothers cartoons for. Does doing it the old way guarantee that it’s going to be authentic and credible? No, I think human creativity exhibits itself in the output, regardless of the tools that you are using.

@nevillehobson (1:21:11)

Shel Holtz (1:21:18)

filling TikTok and YouTube these days.

@nevillehobson (1:21:52)

and the other one was a cartoon, very aimed at young toddlers type of style of a bunny rabbit. And I didn’t really tell it to do much, but I was blown away by what it came back with. So imagine that being employed with something like this. In fact, it’s mind boggling to think that through because that is what’s going to happen actually. So, right.

Shel Holtz (1:22:49)

@nevillehobson (1:22:52)

Shel Holtz (1:22:52)

@nevillehobson (1:22:57)

Shel Holtz (1:23:07)

@nevillehobson (1:23:12)

Right.

with you 100 % on that. I think exciting times are coming, Shil.

Shel Holtz (1:23:35)

@nevillehobson (1:23:37)

Yeah.

Shel Holtz (1:23:59)

I remember the original Barcelona principles, which was the first time we saw an official body say AVEs are bad, no advertising value equivalencies. And that’s something I intend to ask him. Yeah, there are public relations agencies that still offer them. And when I asked the president of one of them, he said, our clients want them.

@nevillehobson (1:24:29)

And they’re still with us.

He’s still using it.

Shel Holtz (1:24:49)

@nevillehobson (1:25:06)

Shel Holtz (1:25:16)

Which is interesting because I have been hearing more and more that the AI community, and I’m talking about the CEOs and the AI engineers and the strategists, they’re mainly on X. Most of the communication between these people is happening on X. And that’s what the AI podcast ends up saying is, know, the CEO of Anthropics said this on X and Sam Altman said that on X.

I may need to go back to X just to be able to stay up to date with what’s happening in AI.

@nevillehobson (1:26:13)

Shel Holtz (1:26:29)

I’m gonna have to

find a way to curate so that what I’m seeing is the AI stuff and avoiding however that algorithm pushes that vile stuff at you. I don’t want that, but I do wanna be where these AI thought leaders are sharing their thoughts. mean, know, Ethan Molyks on LinkedIn, which is great, and Chris Pan and a bunch of other people, but apparently X is the hub for all of this. that…

@nevillehobson (1:26:40)

Shel Holtz (1:27:02)

The post FIR #469: Is Internal Communication Failing? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

While a company’s reputation doesn’t appear as a line item on a profit and loss statement or a balance sheet, it is nevertheless a critical intangible asset that significantly influences financial performance and long-term success. A strong positive reputation fosters trust among consumers and B2B customers, leading to increased customer loyalty, premium pricing power, and greater resilience in times of crisis. It also makes the company more attractive to top talent, reducing recruitment costs and improving employee retention. A favorable reputation can also enhance relationships with investors and partners, providing better access to capital and more advantageous business opportunities.

The public relations profession is in the reputation business. Yet there are new threats to reputations that aren’t yet on most practitioners’ radars — and if they are, they haven’t found their way into plans and strategies. For example, companies that succumbed to political pressure to back away from their DEI commitments have suffered reputational damage, while those that stood by them have seen their reputation scores increase. That may have something to do with general support for DEI, but research found that customers crave consistency from the companies they do business with, and the sudden U-turn away from DEI commitments leadership previously touted was viewed as a failure of integrity.

Add to that the surge of disinformation and job loss AI is already bringing to the business world, and it’s clear we’re facing a new world of reputation management. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at some recent research and reports to zero in on the newest reputation challenges and how communicators should face them.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, June 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:02)

Shel Holtz (00:08)

It attracts talent, it boosts your stock price, it shapes policy outcomes and partnership opportunities. And increasingly, it reflects how well your organization aligns with societal values, not just what you say, but what you do. Lately, the rules for reputational risk have been changing. Traditional threats are still around, scandals, product failures, bad leadership decisions. But now we’re seeing new ones emerge, many of them tied to technology and politics in ways that communicators may not be fully pro-

prepared for, but can’t afford to ignore. Let’s start with the latest Axios-Harris poll on corporate reputation, because the shakeups there are dramatic. Tesla, which once topped the list of most admired companies, has fallen all the way to 60th. Boeing, with its safety mishaps and culture issues, and now the crash of an Air India 787 Dreamliner, well, Boeing sits near the bottom of the list. And what’s especially interesting here

is how much of this decline has to do with cultural alignment or misalignment with public sentiment. Axios points to companies being dragged into culture wars, and it’s not hard to see why. The Trump administration’s ongoing pushback against DEI efforts is having a reputational ripple effect. Companies that backtracked on their DEI commitments or tried to stay neutral are paying a price. Patagonia, Microsoft, and Costco, on the other hand, have increased their reputation scores

precisely because they stayed the course on equity and inclusion. They didn’t cave and the public noticed. This tells us something we probably already knew. Authenticity matters. People don’t expect companies to fix every problem, but they do expect them to be consistent and to have a spine when it counts. In 2025, wishy washy doesn’t cut it, especially with younger generations.

Now, let’s add technology to the mix because it’s getting harder and harder to talk about reputation without AI finding its way into the conversation. Case in point, New York State just updated its Warn Act notices. These are the documents companies have to file when they plan a mass layoff. Now, if you’re laying people off because of AI, you have to say so. It becomes public information. So not only do you risk headlines like, Company X replaces workers with AI,

You’re also potentially triggering employee backlash, customer concern, and stakeholder scrutiny. All of that’s in the reputation column. Think about that for a minute. Laying off people because of a merger or a downturn is one thing, but layoffs tied directly to AI? That’s a reputational landmine. And I’d argue it’s a signal to communicators to get involved early. Make sure there’s a story ready to be told, one that frames the decision in terms of responsibility

future readiness and long-term growth, not just cost cutting. Lay the groundwork with your stakeholders on your company’s strategic approach to AI so nobody’s surprised when hiring takes a dip or layoffs are announced. And AI’s impact isn’t just organizational, it’s personal. A piece out of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business explores how your AI tools at work could actually hurt your professional image.

If your coworkers or managers see you using AI to generate ideas or speed up tasks, they might assume you’re less competent or less committed, even if the output is amazing. We’ve been telling people to embrace AI, to use it to be more efficient. But if the perception is that you’re cheating or cutting corners, then your individual reputation could take a hit, even if your actual work improves. Now this creates a tension.

Organizations want employees to be innovative and tech savvy, but our workplace culture hasn’t caught up. Consequently, we need to help employees not just use these tools, but frame how they use them. Communicators can play a key role here in educating both employees and leaders, especially managers, about responsible AI use looks like and why it’s not a threat to human value. The threats to reputation are evolving.

culture wars, political pressure, layoff transparency, AI ethics, it is not the same game that it was a decade ago. And if communicators don’t help organizations see it, prepare for it, and respond to it, we’re going to be stuck playing defense. So be proactive, let’s help our organizations walk the talk, and let’s remind leaders that in 2025, reputation isn’t just a brand asset, it’s a survival strategy.

@nevillehobson (05:16)

survey company right to hand. That was done in February. Nearly one in three companies reported reputational harm in the past year. They’re citing inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and strikes as triggers. The Exos-Harris poll you mentioned, that’s kind of interesting. found some other statistics to add to what you said. That poll shows 46 % of companies experienced lowered reputation scores and that’s up from 37 % the year before.

consumers under pressure and rising costs and price quality concerns are the main reason for that. What’s driving it overall? That’s a huge answer for that could take us hours to get through everything. It’s so wide ranging economic stress, digital age, disinformation, you touched on that cultural, political polarization, ethical failing, cybersecurity. I’ve got something to say about that in a bit. But the interesting thing too is that ⁓ the ⁓

The Reputational Risk Index Q1 2025 report that just came out has a really interesting list of the top reputational risks. And what struck me was how three new ones are at the top of this list and the rest of the top 10, the seven, they’ve been around for years. But these risks are fast moving and they’ve replaced what was there before. Those top three won’t surprise you.

Number one is AI misuse, harmful or deceptive use of AI, including deepfakes, misinformation, biased decision making or unethical applications that cause harm or manipulate public perception. Number two, this kind of made me, my goodness, association with Elon Musk, instances where an individual company or entity is associated with, targeted by or publicly criticized by Elon Musk.

So it kind of rubs off on you that kind of social like he insults you on X for instance, or does something that brings your name into association with him. That’s not good at all. So that’s number two, that’s the interesting thing. Number three, this.

Shel Holtz (07:54)

of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, right? Whether you’re on his good side or his bad side is just the connection to him.

@nevillehobson (07:58)

No.

Yeah, exactly. So he’s now departed the White House apparently and has gone back to look after his business interests. Does that mean this will change? Unlikely, I would say. But the third one doesn’t surprise me. ⁓ DEI backtracking. The rollback of regulations, policies or initiatives designed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, which aim to ensure fair treatment of full participation for all individuals. If you backtrack on that after you said this is what you’ve implemented.

that will hit your reputation. And that’s your damned if you do or damned if you don’t, I think in light of what the US government is trying to do. So those three are the top reputation risks. The others, anti-competitiveness, defamation, breach of contract, copyright infringement, whistleblowing, price fixing, opioids crisis have been around for a while. But that illustrates, I think that kind of complements ⁓ what we’ve said so far in this. And it’s really quite interesting.

I think this I mean, there’s so much that we could talk about on this show. It’s it’s kind of hard to, you know, keep a keeper, keep it focused on on what we need to say. But I think you mentioned communicators. And that’s my focus to what is the role of communicators of this. And, you know, there’s four things that struck me what can companies do and the communicators working for those companies defend against disinformation, ⁓ rapid monitoring of online discourse.

lead with ethics and transparency in your business. ⁓ No longer optional, some of these things, including DEI, and that’s going to be difficult for some organizations, I suspect. Value-based pricing and quality, as inflation bites companies seen as fair in pricing and product, remain trusted. Crisis preparedness, from digital AI enabled threats to executive misconduct, layered crisis and reputation defense plans are vital.

And I’ve seen people talking about that in the last week, actually, that kind of layered approach to it all. I mean, there’s lots more we could talk about there, but there’s so much happening that can be damaging. And the one that I do want to mention, which I’ll do in a minute, is ⁓ an event that happened here in the UK that I wrote about. I’ve talked about it quite a bit online, as many others have. It’s a global story, even though it’s a British company, Marks & Spencer, the big retailer.

that was hit by a cyber attack in April and it’s still ongoing. ⁓ We’ll talk about that in a bit if you’d like, but they are looking at a cost estimated by experts about 300 million pounds as the cost for not paying the ransom to the hackers. But the consequences have been severe. Interesting though is what was the reputational damage? And there is no single answer to that. So I’ll talk about it a bit, but…

All that stuff about the top three and anything surprising there to you about the fact that these are the new ones that are the big deals for people now?

Shel Holtz (10:58)

@nevillehobson (11:04)

Shel Holtz (11:25)

consulting organizations with disinformation practices. Have you heard of one yet? A PR agency or a marketing agency with a disinformation practice or a disinformation center of excellence? I haven’t. So.

@nevillehobson (12:06)

I haven’t. haven’t. But that’s an interesting one, because I think it’s quite complicated for organizations to realize, partly because I think some of the things that you hear about, and there’s a really good story I’m to mention in a minute that was in the Financial Times the other day, that talked about, as the headline called, the disinformation storm is now hitting companies harder. And much of it is

appears to be kind of opportunistic by bad actors to quote that euphemism of people who do things and say things and take actions that can damage you with surprising velocity that come out at you that completely unexpected and in disinformation largely untrue yet the stories out there. Good example, we see FT quotes, a company called Aalef Foods, Danish company.

the UK’s biggest dairy cooperative. have tankers going around all the farms collecting the milk to make butter and so forth and so on. They learned this the hard way after recently announcing a trial of a feed additive aiming to reduce methane emissions in dairy cows. Some customers pushed to boycott milk products. A social media storm ensued featuring unfounded and bizarre claims that the additive was part of a plot to depopulate the world by creating fertility issues. ⁓

That’s in line with, you know, 5G is a conspiracy of Bill Gates to and, you know, all that stuff went on and it sticks with something like he still see reference to this. This is all the foods, though, is illustrative of that type of fast moving event. And social media plays a huge role in this is is is not can be is very damaging. And they suffered damage as a result of this. There’s other examples I mentioned, too. And it includes a survey by Edelman, they say.

of 400 top communications and marketing execs found that 1810 worry about the impact of disinformation on the businesses. So 80 % fewer than half feel prepared to tackle those risks. What we just talked about.

Shel Holtz (14:10)

@nevillehobson (14:16)

Shel Holtz (14:17)

I was actually hoping you would because here’s something that wasn’t, other than not

having a robust ⁓ defense in place to prevent the hack in the first place, this is something that was done to them.

@nevillehobson (14:38)

yeah, this is at the heart of it because it was a cyber attack that began towards the end of April and severely disrupted their operations to the extent that everything you could do before as a customer with online purchasing, the so-called click and collect, looking up your orders, seeing something in stock, reserving it or that was gone. You couldn’t do any of that. Worse, I suppose, for those folks who don’t do online, they go to the stores, you couldn’t use

contactless payment at all. The machines are all offline because of the risks and there were horror stories emerging of ⁓ people, know, pen and paper to write down orders and take stock from one warehouse to another in their own cars so they could keep stock levels going stuff like that. No deliveries. They were halted. Some stores went cash only wouldn’t take anything you could manually do your cars, but they wouldn’t.

The loyalty apps, 18 million members was not working. Recruitment systems and internal logistics were severely impacted by this. Staff, as I mentioned, staff reported manual workarounds like checking freezer temperatures due to IT shutdowns. I the systems were all shut down. So the hacking group behind it, apparently called Scattered Spider, is known for using social engineering and targeting major corporations with ransomware.

I’ve not seen anything new on this since it was first mentioned about three weeks ago, but the speculation is that they got access to Marks and Spencer systems through a supplier, through an employee they tricked into getting them to log in and that then gave them access to all this. Here you’re not allowed to pay ransoms for things like this is illegal, so they didn’t, but they were quite robust in not doing yes, we’ll weather this storm. That is a pretty

bold move and attracted serious criticism. I wrote a post not long ago that was very critical of Marks and Spencer and their communication with customers. Now knowing what I do know from the latest developments, I don’t really feel that I would change that. I might tone it down a bit because they did communicate, which I didn’t disagree with. I just said it wasn’t very effective. They were following a plan they didn’t communicate to anyone. So how would you know even what was happening?

Here’s a reputational impact they have suffered already. It’s actually interesting, in one sense is nowhere near as bad as many people were speculating. There’s a damn good reason for that. But let me just run down the list of some of these things here. So the reputational impact, according to research from the Maru consumer research firms, big, big in the UK here, and obviously, Marks & Spencer is a big client, brand advocacy dropped. So those who would recommend Marks & Spencer

fell from 87 % to 73 % during this period. Trust erosion. Those who would definitely give Marks & Spencer the benefit of the doubt in future issues dropped from 39 % to 32%. Shopping decisions were affected. Between 25 % and 32 % of consumers said they’d shop elsewhere due to the disruption. But broader trust remained more stable. Overall trust, so people saying they’d either definitely or probably trust Marks & Spencer,

dipped only slightly from 84 % to 82%. That’s quite telling. what that means is that that trust, people are still willing to kind of lend them that trust in spite of all of this. So experts analyzing all this, including Maru itself, talking about the incident shows that even long established trusted brands are vulnerable to cyber attacks. That’s the number one takeaway, they say.

Shel Holtz (18:27)

@nevillehobson (18:28)

Maru concludes in their reporting is that this particular attack underscores cyber risk as a growing reputational threat, especially when it disrupts core services and affects logic schemes, as this one did in a way that you honestly couldn’t imagine. They were offline for six whole weeks. You couldn’t do anything at all. And my wife, Laura, for instance, buy stuff from Marks & Spencer online. She went somewhere else to get a blouse she was interested in. Not the same.

So does that mean she’s now tempted by this other firm? I hope not, because it was even more expensive than Marks & Spencer. So go back to Marks Spencer. But you know, the point is that even loyal customers may waver when trust is tested by operational failure. And that was a thing that the communication, I remember getting the customer emails and the messages pop-ups in the app, we’re all about we’re on it. We’re on it. We’re sorting it. Don’t worry back soon. I mean, that was a kind of soft messaging that, in my opinion,

waste of time that doesn’t help you at all. Although, is that really true, given the metrics that Maru has come up with in terms of the overall brand trust? Maybe they’re banking on that, they’ll weather this through until the £300 million hit is showing on their account books, and they put in place ways to deal with customers. One suggestion I saw a lot, which I thought would make sense is they need to offer something to customers as a kind of a

recompense, if you will, as a gift of some kind, and don’t try and, you know, layer it all with marketing talk or any kind of thing, just a selfless gift as a way of saying, thank you for your support and your trust or whatever it might be. I don’t know what that would look like via the loyalty program wouldn’t be a bad idea. Some of the stuff they do with that loyalty program is called sparks are pretty lame, must admit, you know, free donuts in the food stall, if you spend two pounds, that kind of thing, do something bit more meaningful. So that might help.

Shel Holtz (20:53)

you know.

@nevillehobson (20:55)

Shel Holtz (20:58)

Well, they make sense. mean, this was a crisis communication. And if ever there’s an opportunity to take a reputational hit, it’s during a crisis. And they did not behave like a company in crisis. They showed little empathy for the customer telling you we’re on it ⁓ doesn’t make me feel better about whatever it is that I’m dealing with as a result of this, whatever it is I plan to do that I can’t do whatever.

inconvenience or difficulty it creates for me. ⁓ I don’t want to be one of those people giving Marks and Spencer advice, but I would have ⁓ flooded the zone with empathy for one thing. And I would have turned the spotlight on frontline employees who were dealing with this every day. So you could see, more than just we’re working on it, to seeing somebody actually working on it, somebody dealing with taking cash and saying,

We’re trying to serve as many customers as we can as all this gets sorted out. But I would have really tried to shape the reputation through content marketing as this was going on, rather than just popping up messages saying, we’re still working on it.

@nevillehobson (22:28)

It seemed to me highly scripted. It’s like they’d had a presentation, she’d memorize the top three things to say with a smile. Now, I don’t want to imply that it’s fakery, not at all. Was that enough, though? I don’t know. It didn’t really sit well with me, I must admit. But then again, I may not be the best kind of typical customer for that point of view. They were doing something in that regard, but none of it seemed like it was a plan almost. It seemed to me anyway, just looking at what I saw in communication, what I saw being reported.

the press what I saw about the CEO interviewed saying he and his team are working night and day constantly 724 to fix all this that to me did not sound right

Shel Holtz (23:37)

thing you’re going to expect is the CEO to say he just wants to go home. ⁓ Like like Hayward during the BP golf spill. ⁓ Yeah, I guess the bottom line for all of this, though, is I’m as we’re talking and I’m seeing all the threads pulled together is whether it’s a crisis as Marks and Spencer experienced that was a cyber crime or

@nevillehobson (23:42)

Right, exactly.

Shel Holtz (24:05)

around how to deal with this, because certainly with AI and the ability to create fakery that is hard to detect, we’re gonna need to have those new plans. But I think if organizations are consistently true to their values and show that they have a spine when those values are challenged, they stand to do pretty well reputationally. Those that don’t, don’t. And that’ll be a 30.

@nevillehobson (24:59)

Shel Holtz (25:00)

The post FIR #468: New Threats to Reputation appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Pick a superlative, and it probably applies to Mary Meeker, the venture capitalist and former Wall Street securities analyst best known for her annual Internet Trends Reports. These reports, released in the form of presentation decks, were the culmination of deep research Meeker conducted. Her last report was published June 12, 2019 at Recode’s Code Conference, but she just released a new one dedicated entirely to AI. With credibility as strong as hers, it’s likely that this report will become the defining source of truth about the state of AI. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel break down the report to focus on elements that are meaningful to professional communicators.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, June 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz (00:10)

@nevillehobson (00:17)

If you’re not steeped in the language of model training, deployment, and what it actually costs to run AI at scale, it can feel like stepping into someone else’s board meeting. So I decided to reinterpret it, not to dumb it down, but to make it readable and useful for business communicators, strategists, and leaders who need to understand what’s coming and why it matters. In today’s short form episode, we’re going to unpack what’s in the MECA report, some of the big themes, why they’re significant.

and how communicators in particular might think about sharing this kind of insight within their organizations in plain English, right after this message. Let me start with one insight that really sets the scene for everything else. AI adoption is moving faster than the internet or mobile did, and there’s no waiting this one out. For business leaders, this means constant adaptation.

You can’t rely on annual strategy cycles when AI tools are evolving weekly. Businesses need to become more agile, not just in tech, but in how they communicate, train and respond to change internally. So the question is, how do organizations keep up with something that doesn’t just disrupt industries? It rewrites the rule book as it goes. Shell, when you saw the scale and scope of this report, what stood out to you? And how do you think people outside the tech investor bubble should engage with this sea change?

Shel Holtz (02:06)

@nevillehobson (02:26)

Shel Holtz (02:32)

adoption and scale section of her report is the need for communicators to understand that the people in your audience are using this. It doesn’t matter whether it’s internal or it’s external. So that was one of the big things that jumped out at me. This is not something, regardless of where Gartner

might place it on their hype cycle. It is not something that is going through slow adoption. There was a report, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that said, you know, it really is just another technology. I mean, it may be phenomenal and allow you to do wonderful things, but it still has to spread like a technology. ⁓ And according to Mary Meeker’s report, it’s already done that. ⁓ It’s not going to take as long as other technologies usually do. It’s here.

and people are using it and you have to consider that. There was a lot more ⁓ that jumped out at me, particularly around ⁓ the reshaping of the workforce, but I know you’re planning on talking about that.

@nevillehobson (04:09)

you know, factor in our planning as we go along. If you’ve got a five year plan, you need to do it weekly as the report suggests. And that might surprise a lot of people. You surely can’t be that important. It is. I like the way it’s the report is set up and kind of in eight sections that cover the breadth of what she discusses. But if you look at the kind of headline statement for each of the sections, you do get a sense of the almost a dramatic aspect of

what is actually happening according to Mary Meeker’s report. Change is accelerating. We’ve talked about that. User growth, usage and investment are surging, she says. Performance is improving while costs drop. Usage costs and losses are all growing. And that’s what Mary Meeker describes as part of the huge land grab where you sacrifice immediate profits for simply scaling and getting more people on board. Monetization is complex, she says, open source China and competition.

are rising. AI is merging with the physical world and talks about this now moving out into factories and areas that don’t necessarily make big headlines, but this has been going on already for quite a while. AI-driven growth in internet usage is historic, is driving a new wave of internet activity, says, large-scale adoption across emerging markets. And this is interesting. Many people are coming online primarily to use AI tools. Something I started doing recently was

I installed on my desktop computer, my primary computer, the extension in Chrome to use chat GPT as the primary search tool, not Google, and it replaces Google. It didn’t take me long to suddenly realize that actually I’m getting more value out of my searching this way than I was using Google. Now that just works for me. I know others do agree with that. But this indicates to me, according to another report I saw,

that the younger you are, the more likely you are doing this and not traditional search engines. So this is again, all adds to that picture. And then that final one, number eight, work is evolving rapidly, as you mentioned, and that’s definitely one to focus on. But this gives a sense of the, I guess, the dramatic nature of this that ⁓ is hard to look at it in its totality without

examining each of these areas that are in extreme detail in the report. One of the reasons I did this, which was a I started this for myself, I let me do something in simple English, because this is peppered, absolutely crammed with tech talk. And if you’re not involved in this, you will struggle with this, I’m sure, or maybe not even get the correct synthesis of what you’re reading to understand it fully.

So I think my report did it that did it for me that’s effect. So I decided to publish it, which I did as a PDF on a blog post that you could download. So it’s 340 slides. I’ve done it all down to 18 pages of a PDF. Now, so I’m not saying hey, that’s all you need to read. On the contrary, you need to read this in in tandem with Mary Meeker’s report so you can get the detail because those charts are quite important. I don’t include any of those. But

Let’s talk about the workplace shell because this is something you and I have talked about a number of times on the other episodes of the podcast, particularly one or two of the monthly long form episodes. And I found this one something that if we think people are up to speed with this, I’m not so sure that’s totally true. The awareness that this is happening, we’re going to have co-workers who are AIs and that we definitely talked about.

And the fact that she mentioned in her report, many businesses are lagging behind in supporting the shift that is already underway. So the report underscores the urgency of re-skilling, rethinking performance and supporting AI literacy. And I guess the question arises as it arose in our previous discussions, are we doing enough to prepare teams for AI native workflows or are we still thinking of it as a tool, not a co-worker? That’s the conversation we had recently in fact.

Shel Holtz (08:46)

to manage teams in that environment. The other thing that I think we’re still living in denial is that this is going to affect employment. She makes the point that AI-related job postings surged 448 % between January of 2018 and April of this year. Traditional IT job postings have fallen 9%. So this is a pivot or perish moment in

@nevillehobson (08:53)

Shel Holtz (09:20)

from people who said, ⁓ AI writing can never be as good as human writing. It doesn’t have lived experience. It doesn’t have empathy. It doesn’t have soul. So Chris went and found work that all five of those people had done, things they had written. And he said, you know what? It wasn’t very good. So to claim that we’re as humans producing this Pulitzer quality

⁓ literary level of work as organizational communicators, I think is a conceit. As I’ve said many times, got this from Martin Waxman, most of what we write just has to be good enough and AI can do that. I was listening to the On with Kara Swisher podcast just yesterday and she had on two journalists, each of them have written a book about Sam Altman and OpenAI.

And one of them had interviewed the CEO of EY worldwide. used to be Ernst & Young, one of the big accounting firms. And she said, we will not be laying anybody off because of AI. But we also think that we can grow the business to twice its size without having to increase headcount. you know, where did those new hires come from? Job openings plummet.

I think if we continue to live in this dream world of no layoffs, no job consequences from AI, it’s gonna turn around and bite us in the ass. So we have to start living in reality there. But in terms of the workplace, she also makes the point that this is going to weave its way into everything we do. She says that the biggest changes aren’t coming from Silicon Valley.

They’re showing up where software meets the physical world. And that could be on a farm in Iowa.

@nevillehobson (11:42)

who have also put together some kind of documentation summarizing this port. All of it that I’ve seen, and I’m only talking literally of a dozen or so posts, have used an AI to produce it, which got me wondering on one or two I’ve looked at, one in particular, the first thing I spotted was a date error. Did anyone check the AI’s output before they wrote their LinkedIn post saying, hey, here’s a report about this is my interpretation, et cetera. I used chat GPT to summarize.

the report for me, which I then myself wrote the insights from. So I made sure that I did that took me twice as long otherwise as it would have. And I’m fairly confident that it is as accurate as the report itself. It’s because that’s what I’ve been referencing. I noticed David Amano did something quite cool. I must admit he created the GPT that as it’s described, it summarizes only the uploaded Mika AI report with no outside data.

So I played around with it and it’s got actually when you when load it up in your in your chat GPT client, it’s got four already populated potential questions you might want to ask. So I just clicked one. What does report say about chat GPT use? And boom, off it reeled off a whole load of bullet points and so forth. Hey, I’ve got all that in my report, too. So at least we’re kind of consistent in how we accept that was all generated by AI. The point to me about that, though, is the argument.

That’s ongoing still. I find it’s such a waste of time. Is all this stuff about, the dashes and that indicates as AI can’t be any good, blah, blah, blah. No, look, watch out. This is now what’s happening every single day by people up and down every country and every business are using AI to help them be productive, not to con others in that, ⁓ aren’t I clever, but it’s actually the AI who wrote it. Not at all. Maybe some would do that, but that’s not important.

So pay attention to this tool that others scoff at sometimes that this is going to help you because it’s an inevitability, right? And whether you like it or not, this is here. It’s it’s coming. It’s here now. And others are already making good use of it. As we’ve reported, we mentioned again today that there are others further still who are not doing what they need to do to prepare the people for this wave that’s coming. So it is coming.

I think one other area or a number, but one in particular comes to mind as I’m talking this point is the competitive nature of this from a geopolitical point of view. So we’ve heard Trump going on about this, that and the other. China is catching up fast with these tools. Other countries are doing the same. What does that all mean for us in the context of what’s going on in the world right now, which is pretty alarming everywhere you look. So now there’s this. ⁓

You can’t control the things you can’t control. What you can control is your own organization probably. So I’d focus on that and don’t worry about all the other stuff for the time being until the rockets start coming over, right? So ⁓ it is interesting. One other point to mention, I want to just get across this point here, Shell, ⁓ about how ⁓ this isn’t just a tech race, which is related. It’s a global economic and geopolitical competition, says Mary Meesher. The report highlights three threats to current AI leaders.

powerful open source alternatives, intense U.S. competition, and China’s state-backed AI ambitions. For the global businesses, it isn’t abstract. It affects vendor choices, data handling, and regulatory risk. So should businesses be preparing for an AI environment that’s fragmented, politically sensitive, and constantly shifting? Yes, they should.

Shel Holtz (15:55)

⁓ So I think the software industry is going to catch up with the fragmentation of ⁓ the LLMs, the frontier models after a while. ⁓ You were talking about David Armano’s GPT. I wasn’t aware of that until you put it in our Slack channel. I’m definitely going to go take a look at that. ⁓ I just created a GPT. I got a new camera ⁓ and

It has all kinds of settings I don’t understand. And it’s been a long time since I’ve really paid attention to photography. And I was looking at all the pitches that are on Facebook and other channels for photography lessons and guides. And I was watching some YouTube videos. And finally, I said, the heck with this. And I went to chat GPT and I created a GPT. said, ⁓ create a tutorial that will teach me the settings of, and I gave it the model name and number of the camera I got.

@nevillehobson (17:20)

Shel Holtz (17:21)

I hadn’t had a chance to look at it at all or read a single piece about it. And with limited time, I just dumped all of the links that you shared, the report itself, and one or two other things I found into Notebook LM. created a notebook and I had it create a briefing paper. I had it create the 15 minute podcast that has the man and the woman talking to each other about the substance of the material that’s in the folder. In fact, the briefing report,

divided it into two parts. It was Mary Meeker’s report itself. And part two, it says critical analysis and nuance. And this is some of the other reports that didn’t just summarize Mary Meeker’s report, but shared their own views about it, some of which may have been contradictory. For example, ⁓ one of them made the point that just because people have adopted AI doesn’t mean they’re using it for…

work and productivity purposes. A lot of people have adopted this as just to have somebody to talk to or to ask the occasional question or to play games with or what have you. So you really have to start to think about the depth of use among the people in your organization and not just how many active AI users you have. They could just be, you know, making meme images with them for all you know. you know, so.

@nevillehobson (19:13)

Shel Holtz (19:13)

that was one interesting observation ⁓ that came out of some of the reports.

@nevillehobson (19:21)

Chat GPT has done a great job. My need is different to yours, however, because what I’m looking for is something that will let me not use my phone when Laura, my wife and I are out looking at interesting places or walking around stately homes in the countryside. Instead, having a camera that I can use just for that, and it’s not going to be connected to the internet industry. That’s not a prime need. Chat GPT came out with five recommendations. And here we’re not talking about single lens reflex cameras.

not talking about mini compact cameras, talking about something slightly beyond that, that suits that use. I don’t want to have to figure out aperture and all that. I don’t want to know about any of that stuff. So probably a compact camera. It’s come up with one I’ve now been doing further research on, but it started with that. And that’s a change. And it’s a simple one. people are doing that kind of thing all the time, I’m sure. yeah, exactly. So

Shel Holtz (20:42)

@nevillehobson (20:45)

the way chat GPT works, it knows everything about me now from all those chats. And it surprises me sometimes when I ask it something. And it reminds me that we discussed this very topic six months ago, stuff like that. So it is part of our landscape. This is whether we like it or not. Merrymakers report, highly technical though it is, but look at some of the ⁓ business friendly versions or interpretations or

aligned commentaries that are popping up here and then including the one I wrote and published in my blog today, that it will give you the means to better understand all this in your own particular context. But, you know, don’t don’t look at it then come back to in five months, it’ll be out of date by then I would imagine so it’s as fast moving without any question.

Shel Holtz (21:58)

thing that’s going to drive change to the way people do their jobs. That’s just a new tool. So we need to understand job evolution as it relates to AI, ⁓ things like working with AI coworkers and lead that conversation and help prepare the employee population because it’s going to be a dramatic change or may I say unprecedented. I also think that

@nevillehobson (22:53)

Shel Holtz (22:54)

mantle and run with it. ⁓ Also, it’s important to keep everybody grounded in the role of humans here. One line I read that I liked, and I think this is in one of the reports about Mary Meeker’s report, was that the models ⁓ can predict a perfectly logical next action that falls flat the moment it meets unwritten office culture or office policy.

⁓ You have to keep the company grounded in the fact that people need to be involved in these things. ⁓ Finally, Mary Meeker made the point that this is ⁓ the biggest change in knowledge distribution since the printing press. So bigger than the internet, ⁓ because the internet was after the printing press, right? ⁓ Knowledge is now suddenly more available.

@nevillehobson (23:55)

Shel Holtz (24:18)

an AI CEO, it’ll probably do pretty well at navigating the issues and challenges you’re facing right now. But looking 10 years ahead, my understanding is that it’s not very good at that yet. So keep everybody grounded in the need ⁓ for the human in the loop.

@nevillehobson (25:06)

for my final point to mention is something I mentioned in the blog post where I kind of summarized why does this matter to communicate is more than any other, but not just HR operations, marketing, etc. Your employees are using AI with or without policy. That’s the thing to bear in mind. That’s not like someone they’re using it no matter what your customers expect faster, smarter, more tailored interactions. Your competitors are building new capabilities you might not see coming. And there are about a dozen more, but those three struck me as something that

keep in mind when you’re looking at these developments and trends that Mary Mikos pointing out and others too, and all the interpreted wisdom that’s emerging what others are saying to navigate all of that. And you realize if you are skeptical, that this is definitely real and this is happening and you need to be the change agent as a communicator. So that’s your job.

Shel Holtz (26:25)

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