Public Affairs and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities & Limitations (Part 1)

🤖 How to fit AI for Public Affairs: 12 tools, 25 Pompts

[+ Its Biggest Pitfalls] 👇

Yes, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are going to transform the way Public Affairs professionals communicate, engage and influence their audience. BUT let's look beyond the AI hype.

Today as the state of things are, AI assistants are still in their infancy, with rather marginal productivity wins for specific use cases, inaccurate outcomes, and legal risks.

There are better ways to leverage the real Tech opportunity today. Too many PA professionals and International/EU Associations are still working in primitive way when it comes to digital.

With the power of automation, data-driven business intelligence, and digital transformation, you can generate substantial productivity wins, customer/member delight, and unlock growth.

In this article (part 1), we are covering following topics:

• Where AI can help Public Affairs now?

• 12 AI Tools and 25 Prompts to try out for PA

• Limitations of AI tools today

• AI Ethics: How you should navigate them

In part 2, we will discuss why you should fix your basic digital issues first, before jumping on ChatGPT:

• Why you should resolve your basic digital challenges, first

• How to create real digital productivity wins and growth

• Results you can achieve in a few weeks.

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Where AI can help Public Affairs now?

AI tools like ChatGPT (Open AI), Jasper.ai, ... can help you create more relevant digital campaigns that resonate with your stakeholders and achieve your goals.

Among Public Affairs different roles, AI tools will impact the most communication, marketing and design jobs, but also policy/advocacy jobs, on 3 dimensions:

• content creation

• data capture and insights monitoring

• advertising/campaigns optimization.

1. Generate basic content and enhance creativity

• Chat GPT acts as a checklist provider, which you can use before writing your content. For instance, it gives recommendations on how to write a blog post that ranks well in Google and results in conversions or a great press release.

• AI tools can help you generate draft content for press releases, emails, letters, blog post, social media post, images, videos, newsletters, ad copy that resonates with different audiences.

• AI tools can analyse your topic, audience, tone and keywords, and produce content that matches your brand voice and style.

• AI tools can help you write ads optimized for clicks and conversions using predictive technology.

• You can also use AI tools to edit, proofread and optimize your content for SEO and readability.

• AI tools can help you enhance your creativity by providing you with inspiration, ideas and insights for your digital campaigns.

• ...

A good way to start

• Jasper.ai – this is an AI copywriting assistant. It covers a wide range of marketing functions like Ads Headlines and Primary Text, Company Bios, AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) copy, Problem-Agitate-Solution copy, Engaging Questions, Short Social Posts, Email Subject Lines, Content Rewriting. Free trial.

• Hemingway - to check the readability score. It analyses your content and suggests where you could make it clearer, more concise, or improve your diction.

More tools we spotted for your content creation:

Few more copywriting tools:

• Writesonic

• copy.ai

• rytr.me

Audio editing:

• Descript

• Adobe Podcast

• Vidyo.ai

Image generation:

• Photoroom (our favourite)

• Stable Diffusion

  
  

• Midjourney

• DALL-E

• StabilityAI

• Adobe Firefly

• Canva new AI-powered features

2. Monitor your topics and manage reputation

• AI can help you manage your reputation by monitoring, analyzing and responding to your online mentions, reviews, feedback and sentiment.

• AI tools can use natural language processing and sentiment analysis to track and understand what your audience, media, politicians, competitors and influencers are saying about you, your brand, your products/services and your policy issues.

• You can also use AI to respond to your online comments, questions, complaints and compliments, and build trust and loyalty with your audience.

• ...

A good way to start

• The AI recommendations are a good starting point for a newbie and are disappointing for experienced professionals. Think of it as your assistant or a junior who can take over some of the mundane tasks/base contextual work you’d normally have to deal with yourself or things you already know as an expert in your field (draft) copy, summary of trends, speaking points...). You must review/sources/edit the outputs....to add a layer of quality (point of view, story, authenticity...)

• AI can help track media impressions, coverage, and analyse sentiment.

• For social media marketers, you can discover high-impact influencers.

• AI can help detect prospects

3. Campaigns optimization

• AI can help you segment your audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviours, preferences and needs.

• AI can help you personalize your digital campaigns by delivering the right content, at the right time, to the right person, on the right channel.

• AI can also help you optimize your digital campaigns by testing, measuring and improving your results.

• AI can create targeted media lists or help identify journalists most likely to be interested in a story.

• AI can provide insights into how a campaign performs and make recommendations for changes.

• AI can help evaluate the effectiveness of marketing and communications campaigns

• ...

A good way to start

• Have a top-notch CRM with AI-powered features for Marketing, smart integrations and automations, in place (Symantra's flagship product!).

• Drop substandard CRMs, digital tools and marketing software (Symantra can advise you on this).

• Stop the Excel way of working. Really.

25 Prompts for Public Affairs & Comms to try out

AI Prompts for Drafting Social Media Posts

1. Write a tweet promoting a new [product, idea, event...] suited for a target audience in [industry, sector] and [location].

2. Generate a post for LinkedIn featuring a testimonial about [product] in [number] words or less.

3. Create a LinkedIn post promoting a new job opening in [number] words or less with a strong call to action at the end.

4. Write a YouTube video description for a new [xx] review that links to [insert links] for viewers to go to your landing page for more information.

5. Write a blog post title to promote a new social media campaign in [number] characters or less.

6. Draft an email subject line to promote a new blog post that feels personal, enticing, and not spammy.

AI Prompts to Create Podcast or Video Content

1. Draft a podcast episode about the latest [industry] trends and innovations that contains [number] minutes of dialogue.

2. Produce [number] of topics for a video series featuring interviews with thought leaders in [industry, sector].

3. Develop a podcast episode discussing the benefits of [xx] divided into 4 chapters.

4. Produce a podcast episode on the history and evolution of [your organisation].

5. Create a podcast episode that features an expert roundtable discussion on [industry/policy topics].

6. Produce ideas for a video series featuring a behind-the-scenes look at your org's operations.

7. Develop a podcast episode that offers tips and advice on succeeding in [industry, sector] as an (job role).

8. Create a video series highlighting the impact of your [action, policy...] on the lives of citizens in [demographic].

AI Prompts for Content Promotion

1. Suggest the best time and day of the week to publish a blog post about [topic].

2. Write a press release announcing a new product launch geared toward [target audience] that sounds confident, exciting, and interesting.

3. Generate ideas for outreach emails to promote a new (idea, policy action, xx), including [number] of attention-grabbing subject lines and [number] of clear calls to action.

4. Suggest the [number] best hashtags for a social media campaign on [social media platform] to reach [target audience].

AI Prompts for Repurposing Content

1. Repurpose a blog post into a video script using this article: [insert old blog post].

2. Turn a webinar into a podcast episode using this pre-existing transcript: [insert old webinar transcript].

3. Generate ideas for updating an outdated infographic on [topic] for 2025.

4. Rewrite a blog post into a social media post series of [number] posts on [social media platform of choice].

5. Turn a research report into a series of social media posts using this information: [facts from research report].

Limitations of Generative AI for Public Affairs today

In high-stakes sectors like public affairs, where Timeliness, Transparency, and Accuracy are paramount, Generative AI, in its standard, out-of-the-box format, like GPT3.5 or GPT4 significantly underperform.

3 severe limitations of current LLMs for Public Affairs and Enterprises:

•  Lack of Timeliness – ChatGPT works on old data, it does not capture recent legislative/regulatory/political changes nor the recent industry-specific insights. It is unsuitable for tasks demanding in-depth expertise. The lack of real-time updates of news could result in catastrophic decisions, communications and results.

• Lack of Transparency – Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT do not provide sources for the information they generate. This is "black box".  Having to always verify what an LLM/ChatGPT says can slow things down and increase the chance of costly mistakes for your organisations and your clients/members.

•  Lack of Accuracy -  Hallucinations issues (coherent but misleading or outright fabricated responses ) are a serious problem with current LLMs. This can badly harm your organisation credibility. In PA, every detail counts. Any communication or decision made on hallucinated or inaccurate responses to queries could result in brand reputation and credibility issues for your organisation (and staff).

3 extra IT challenges in terms of Data Governance:

• Privacy and Security (Leaks risks): Generative AI models trained on sensitive or proprietary data raise concerns about privacy and security. You must implement robust data protection measures to safeguard against unauthorized access or misuse of sensitive information.

• Regulatory Compliance: You must ensure that their use of Generative AI complies with industry-specific regulations, such as GDPR. Meeting regulatory requirements may involve additional validation, documentation, or oversight.

• Integration with your existing IT ecosystem: Integrating Generative AI into existing enterprise workflows and systems can be challenging, particularly if legacy systems or infrastructure are not designed to support AI applications. Ensuring seamless integration with strategic software require customization and collaboration across different teams (and excellent IT engineers, of course).

If you expect new tactics and out-of-the-box ideas to experiment, pass your way. In all cases, critical logic must be applied to make this content relevant, accurate, original.

Plus, AI tools come with important ethical concerns.

The good news is that the free/generic AI tools are not going to replace PA professionals anytime soon!

AI Ethics: How you should navigate them

The use of ethics in AI is essential to prevent the misuse of technology. Without an ethical framework behind it, artificial intelligence can result in 3 problems.

1. Privacy and Security Concerns

It can impact the brand's credibility but also bring legal ramifications. For content creators, there is a real fear of intellectual property theft. The information AI uses to improve isn't guaranteed to be protected. The amount of personal data or strategic business data users unknowingly give away for AI solutions isn't disclosed — and it could be using unauthorized intellectual property to work.

Without stronger ethical guidelines at EU level, it can lead to data breaches, legal conflict, and other misuses. Some companies have already forbidden the use of ChatGPT for their employees, like JP Morgan, Amazon, Verizon or Accenture, or Samsung after spotting some strategic data leaks.

In May 2023, the European Commission told the staff not to use ChatGPT for sensitive work and established some basic internal rules to prevent Shadow AI.

2. Unequal bias

Many AIs have displayed an insensitive or unfair bias against certain individuals or groups using the technology. So how can programming be less biased? This is one of the hottest topics in AI right now, and the solutions (and regulations) are still being forged to create an AI of trust for Europe and at each Member state's level (EU AI Act & co...).

3. Incorrect or Incomplete Information

As a PA pro or content marketer, you want to keep control over your messaging.

As such, AI tools outcomes do not help that much.

You would never risk publishing an article that you can’t trace back sources.

• There are valid concerns about whether the results it generates are reliable. Just because AI said it, doesn't mean it's accurate or reliable (hallucination effect...). ChatGPT cannot access the internet to collect data in real-time and understand the world has changed in the last months.

• While it can be a good source of inspiration, you should not use it for content creation for your campaigns to avoid plagiarism (and it harms badly your SEO!). Typically, AI does not disclose the exact sources of information it shares with users.
  

Are you (and your org.) ready to take the (legal/financial) risk of publishing a content that you can’t trace back sources?

Symantra offers the only solution in the market to implement private, custom and safe GenAI for Public Affairs & Membership-based orgs or Knowledge Intensive companies.

Conclusion

While AI has the potential to automate some routine tasks, it is not yet advanced enough to replace creativity, strategic thinking, and human interaction.

At the same time, more and more organisations are now laying the foundation that will make those AI tools useful.

And that foundation is about having a strong data strategy and data governance, an optimized digital ecosystem, and smart automation in place.

This must be a business priority and we, at Symantra, can help you:

• to lay the data foundation to become AI-ready (CRM migration, custom integrations, hyper-automation...),

• to set up your custom GenAI assistant trained on your organisation's knowledge & data to better serve your clients and boost your staff's productivity (learn more here about our new GenAI product)

• to generate substantial productivity wins (free up 1 day a week for key staff to work on more high-value activities),

• to lower operational costs by 30%,

• to unleash growth by being data-centric,

• and create more impact in your marketing campaigns.

We believe, that using generic 'out-of-the-box' LLMs and AI tools in the context of PA, risks still outweigh the benefits.

Our approach, at Symantra, is to implement for our clients custom and private GenAI Assistant - fully EU compliant - trained only on your business knowledge and data, matching the 3 key criteria of safe GenAI:

Timeliness, Transparency, Accuracy.

More on Symantra Secure GenAI solutions Public Affairs & Enterprises here.

Related article: Public Affairs and AI: Fix your Basic Digital issues first, before jumping on Chat GPT (Part 2) 

Symantra is a Brussels-based digital agency specialized in 360° solutions for International Associations and Public affairs. www.symantra.com