Technology-enabled communications – a boon or a bane?

I recently read the book, The Tech Whisperer authored by Jaspreet Bindra. It is about Digital transformation and the technologies that enable it. The blurb on the cover says: “AI-authored chapter inside.” A chapter in the book on Artificial Intelligence is written using AI. This caught my attention and prompted me to read the book.

Undoubtedly AI, chatbots, and virtual assistants are technologies for the present and the future. Some of these have made good inroads in several spheres of our life.  For instance, smart lighting solutions from companies like Wipro are Amazon Alexa enabled to help you control your lighting brightness, intensity, colour, and so on.

What happens when these technologies make their way into PR and Communications? It is bound to usher in a new era of better communications and more precise analytics. They can also contribute to our daily activities in the following manner:

Artificial Intelligence

If chapters can be written using AI, it is not difficult to write press releases, features, and thought leadership articles using the technology. PR consultancies will look to quickly scale up their content expertise with AI, and corporate communications teams will try to build this capability inhouse. Hopefully, there will be start-ups focusing on assisting consultancies and companies, small and big, in this adoption. AI will also assist in making content relevant to a particular media platform or a person. This will improve the conversion rates of story pitches and thought leadership placements.

Chatbots 

When clients and media folks open their email, a chat window pops up to remind them to act on an email sent by the consultancy. It will goad them to respond to the email. This is likely to make WhatsApp conversations redundant. This may also be a bane for those stakeholders who believe there is enough spamming of pitches, releases, and other content from companies and consultancies.

Voice Assistants

Imagine if communication professionals can use these assistants to track and read stories about a topic or a client or for the day. What some consider as a chore can now become an interesting play. If real-time alerts can be flashed on the assistant app on the mobile, Google alerts may become passé.

These assistants will also be used to call clients and journalists. Who wants to use the old-fashioned way of speed dials on the mobile when command and place a call is at the tip of your tongue! 

Surely, these technologies can add more jazz and spin to the way we practice communications today. I hope some start-ups focus on our community and create unique solutions for us. Do you think there would be newer technologies that can help us be more relevant, agile and smarter? Share with us. Let us build a technology-enabled communications world together.

Radha Radhakrishnan

Radha Radhakrishnan has over 25 years of experience in corporate communications and marketing across different industries and geographies. She has built a reputation as a storyteller and a creative thinker. She has mentored social entrepreneurial startups and has been a visiting faculty at premier communications institutes in India. She is currently the global head of corporate communications at Wipro Enterprises. She anchors the weekly PR and Communication podcast, Mrigashira.