Industry confidence remains high as PR leaders embrace AI tools - Confidence Tracker

PR leaders remain confident about market conditions, and are increasingly exploring the potential of AI tools such as ChatGPT, according to the latest ICCO and PRCA Confidence Tracker published today.

73% of leaders say that they are ‘very confident’ or ‘quite confident’ about the future of their organisation, and 16% are ‘not very confident’ or ‘not confident at all’, compared with 83% and 16% respectively in the last Tracker published in February 2023. While there has been a fall, the overwhelming majority of leaders remain positive about market conditions.

Over a third of respondents say that they are now using content generation tools frequently or fairly frequently. And the proportion of leaders who say they will ‘never’ use AI tools has fallen sharply (from 25% to 9%).

On confidence, comments include:

“Current budgets are being impacted our clients suppressed revenues in 2022. Many are now expressing more optimism for 2023”

“We had a very good year last year but January has been slower. However some good opportunities and clients are in the pipeline”.

“[We are] well positioned and diversified between important trust and sustainability issues and consumer as well as b2b”

“We're facing challenges but overcoming them routinely”.

Most comments confronting lack of confidence relate to internal structural change and tough economic conditions in the country of the respondent.

The highly confident respondents refer to strong pipeline, diverse client base, lower overheads as a result of the pandemic, and an abundance of opportunities and briefs coming in.

On AI, comments included:

“It's clear that ChatGPT and other AI software is going to have a massive impact on the industry - we are investigating how it can be used to help our teams with bulk work that can be automated or made quicker, to free them up to be more creative and have time to become better counsel to our clients.”

“We have implemented a ban on it internally for client use until an official policy is established, and we have reviewed the risk parameters for the organisation”

Uses tend to include ‘quick wins’ such as drafting emails, drafting press releases, media monitoring, translation, content generation and research. The words ‘experimenting’ ‘playing’ ’learning’ appear in multiple responses, with interest being high but with caution being exercised.

Q&R conducted the latest Pulse Check survey with ICCO and PRCA members as part of the Confidence Tracker series. The survey included two questions, one relating to AI, the other business confidence. Responses were collected over the course of 5 days using an appropriate survey method and data was analysed to obtain a snapshot of members’ mood.

Total number of responses: 197 (156 ICCO, 41 PRCA)