The rise of the cyborg communicator

Joe Gallo is director of communications and head of communications for crypto and PayPal Ads at Paypal. 

“The future of AI is not about replacing humans, it’s about augmenting human capabilities.”
— Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google

AI has moved at a pace more rapid than anything we’ve seen since the dawn of the internet. In just two years, it has changed how we complete everyday tasks in our personal lives and forced us to determine how we use it in our professional lives. The challenge for communicators is how to leverage this powerful technology to achieve our ultimate goal as storytellers.

Communications has always been about influence and trust building through storytelling. As technology has advanced, we’ve had to evaluate how it could help us accomplish those goals. In the past, that meant evaluating platforms as channels to reach audiences. But with the powerful models behind AI, larger, more existential questions have come to the forefront.

PR professionals must evolve from artists into “cyborgs” — a combination of humans and AI — to drive greater value, efficiency and productivity. That shift allows us to devote more time and energy to higher-value strategic counsel. Becoming a cyborg means not just using AI for simple search but learning to leverage the full power the technology offers. From giving it the necessary context to provide tailored feedback, to using it as an always-on brainstorming partner, to ultimately creating agents that autonomously complete tasks, the fusion of human workers and AI will drive greater value for stakeholders and audiences.

From human to cyborg

Generative AI has been the fastest adopted consumer application in history. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months in 2022, giving people the ability to access the world’s knowledge in just a few keystrokes. As the technology advances, agents are emerging to complete tasks such as shopping, drafting emails and more with a simple prompt.

Media publications are already leveraging AI for reader engagement, text-to-audio conversion, article drafts and more. With this widespread adoption and the rise of new media, communicators cannot afford to lag behind. We need not only to adopt generative AI but to create new tools as extensions of ourselves — effectively becoming part human, part machine.

By becoming cyborgs, AI doesn’t replace us but becomes an integral part of the team. It becomes a brainstorming partner, a second set of eyes, a data analyzer — helping with tasks that take enormous amounts of time while adding value. With proper direction, AI can be an invaluable teammate.

Consider what Cognizant has done. Its CCO didn’t just challenge the team to use AI. He created space for them to explore it and provided resources to develop PR tools through vibe coding. They created dashboards that tied earned media to stock price, showing senior stakeholders the added value of their department in a new way.

This is one example of how communicators can not just save time but increase the value their function provides. New ways to measure impact. Faster results and analysis. Deeper insights. Leveraging AI helps accelerate communications’ evolution from cost center or trusted advisor to strategic counselor — with a true seat at the table.

How to start augmenting your skills

• Forget the stereotypes. From the moment AI entered the workplace, the perception was that it would replace humans. In recent years, that has shifted — it’s now expected that communicators use AI for day-to-day work.
• Learn from peers. Talk to colleagues inside and outside your company. Ask how they’re using AI, what use cases they’ve found successful and which ones have failed.
• Understand your corporate AI policy. Research by Axios HQ and Off the Record shows that about half of corporations have AI policies. If yours does, read and understand it. Know where the lines are and what’s off limits. Think of it like learning the rules to a board game.
• The only way to understand AI’s power is to try it. Train it with past work, have it analyze new content, and evaluate its feedback against what you know about your target audience, publication or client.

Fear of the AI takeover

“Will AI replace all humans? Will it take our jobs?” These are common questions as more organizations adopt AI. They are fair concerns, but we are still far from what experts call artificial general intelligence.

The greater risk is losing critical thinking by blindly accepting machine outputs. Communicators are trained to challenge everything — and we must do this even more with AI. Trust and reputation are at the core of our work, and because hallucinations and fabrications are still too common, nothing AI provides can be taken at face value.

As former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty once said: “AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.” The future of communications lies in merging artistry with machine intelligence. Those who embrace AI as an extension of themselves will become more productive, more efficient and free to deliver higher-level strategic value.

It may seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Start small — use AI for document outlines, second reads or brainstorming sessions — and build from there.

Disclosure

In the spirit of being a cyborg communicator, I used AI to help build an outline for this story and provide feedback on structure and flow. AI did not write any of the content.