What AI in comms will look like in 5 years
From the end of truth as we know it to the rise of AIR, buckle up.
The year is 2031. You still look great, by the way. That gray in your hair suits you.
AI has been a part of the business world for nearly a decade. No longer is it a shiny label slapped onto a product to make it seem cutting-edge. It’s as quotidian to professionals as an Excel document.
But that doesn’t mean the communications profession looks the same.
This is a look at what AI in comms might look like in five years — the good, the bad and the ugly. Of course, much like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in “A Christmas Carol,” these are only potential futures. If we don’t like what we see, it’s up to us to change it.
And for more insight into what the future of comms and AI could look like, join us in Austin, Texas for our Future of Communications Conference.
- The rise of AIR
As professionals and consumers both become more reliant on AI, a new field is beginning to emerge.
While public relations — communications initiatives designed to convince and persuade people — will not disappear, AI relations will become its own parallel discipline. Think SEO but broader, deeper, working to surface content in LLM answers, appeal to agents making purchasing decisions and more. This audience has its own rules, own likes and dislikes, and must be catered to in a way that differs significantly from humans — but still in a way that ultimately persuades humans.
- AI replaces the entry level
AI can already churn out a perfectly serviceable press release or a decent first draft of a pitch. It needs refining and customization, sure, but it can get the job done in a blink. This, unfortunately, takes away a role historically occupied by interns and junior staffers. For generations, writing these somewhat formulaic documents has been how newbies learn the trade. But AIs are often cheaper, faster and you never have to talk to them about appropriate office attire. As of August 2025, there was already a 35% reduction in entry- level roles nationwide. AI isn’t to blame for all of that loss, but it certainly is for some of it. Expect this trend to accelerate as AI gets smarter.
- More senior roles shift
But even as AI takes on basic tasks, humans are needed for higher-level functions: Interpreting data gathered by AI. Finding human angles. Helping leadership understand what’s noise and what’s signal.
Many senior-level communicators may find themselves overseeing teams of agents rather than humans, acting primarily as an editor and gatekeeper as they sort through strategies and content created by machines to determine what’s worth acting on, what needs customization and where a wholly creative approach is needed.
AI will no longer be a tool for productivity — it will be a tool for improving overall product quality, making up for the weaknesses of individual humans and sifting through a breadth of information humans simply can’t process.
- Determining what is AI is almost impossible
Right now, there are a number of tells that can indicate when something was created by AI: The em dash, a photo where objects seem to melt together. But these won’t last forever. The technology will get better, eliminate tells and become indistinguishable from reality. Soon, it will become more and more difficult for the average person to know what they’re truly looking at. Is it real? Is it honest? Did it ever exist? The naked eye and human brain will no longer be able to tell.
While some AI companies, like Anthropic, are moving toward watermarking of all AI-generated content, including text, there will likely be ways to circumvent these tools. This will create challenges for brands as convincing fakes take over the social space and it becomes increasingly difficult to prove what’s a lie.
- Trust craters.
It’s not like trust is at high levels now — not in institutions, not in government, not in the media. But the one area where trust has remained high is in interpersonal interactions. People still, generally, trust their friends, bosses and influencers.
That could all change when AI becomes commonplace everywhere.
We’re already seeing this with restaurants leaning on AI to depict their food on menu boards, with artists posting videos of themselves creating so people know it’s real and with novels being dissected for signs of AI use.
Soon, it will become commonplace for humans to doubt everything they see and read online. Which makes it harder to build the necessary trust between organizations and people.
- Human-created content is more coveted than ever.
This, in turn, will make things that are provably human valuable.
A logo designed by a human artist instead of a machine.
A handmade good.
A piece of written content with real, true human stories embedded — the kind that a machine could not create.
Real-world experiences that build genuine memories.
These will be the ways to build trust in the future. The issue will become scale and targeting.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
