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AI is giving PR a bigger creative role

A few months ago, social feeds overflowed with selfies re-imagined as dreamy Studio Ghibli cartoons. Millions of people produced and shared these images in hours, without design teams or media budgets. That 'Ghiblification' wave showed how culture moves at a pace traditional workflows cannot match. For communicators, the question is no longer whether artificial intelligence (AI) matters, but how fast we can fold it into the craft without letting go of human intelligence that makes ideas resonate. PR has always thrived on spotting tension, shaping narrative and delivering relevance in real time. What has changed is the gap between the spark of an idea and the moment it reaches an audience. Generative tools have bridged that gap. A single prompt can turn a headline into a storyboard. A quick voice-clone can place a familiar personality at the centre of an activation. AI not only removes the friction that previously slowed judgment; at times, it replaces judgement altogether. Culture travels at the speed of AI Consider how the Australian Northern Territory launched ChatNT to reframe the perception of their low travel season. The team trained a conversational bot on broadcaster Abbie Chatfield's speech patterns and regional travel data, then let visitors 'chat' with Abbie for bespoke itineraries. This approach worked because it solved a real tension – travellers' doubts about holidaying in tropical heat – while delivering service in a voice people already trusted. Web dwell time surged and intent to book rose, proving that a smart AI layer can convert curiosity into action when the story feels personal. Another example comes from Lenovo's Meet Your Digital Self initiative. Life-size avatars built from volunteers' social footprints invited families to talk with a mirror image of their online persona. The experience turned abstract worries about digital identity, into a tangible moment that earned headlines across tech, health and lifestyle media. The lesson is not the novelty of the software, but the clarity of the insight: people struggle to bridge the gap between real and online selves, and an AI-enabled demo made that struggle visible. Both cases follow the same sequence. First, isolate a tension that matters to a defined community. Next, prototype a creative answer at speed. Finally, let audiences experience the answer before the conversation moves on. AI supplies the mechanics; emotional intelligence supplies the meaning. Ideas move from spark to impact in a single sprint Speed by itself is meaningless if the work misses the mark. That is why the most effective teams pair generative creativity with fast, accurate audience insight. Within HAVAS, the Converged operating system does exactly that by drawing together first-party data and large-scale research signals in a single interface. A planner can pull a persona such as 'UAE professionals who value work-life balance and follow tech founders on LinkedIn' in seconds, test two headline options, and watch predicted reach and cost shift in real time. For PR leads, this means message testing happens during conception, not after launch, and the same dataset guides earned, paid and owned decisions. A streamlined workflow brings two benefits. The obvious gain is time: campaigns that once took weeks to move from concept deck to market now accelerate in days. The deeper gain is confidence. Legal and corporate-affairs teams can see every data source used to build a persona and approve language before it goes public, reducing the last-minute edits that drain momentum from bold ideas. Yet none of this diminishes the need for human craft. AI cannot read a room, sense cultural fatigue or decide when silence is wiser than speech. Audiences still judge authenticity by tone, context and timing. A generative image may catch the eye, but it is the nuanced message behind that image that earns trust. The future of PR is not about turning communicators into coders. It is about equipping communicators with faster tools while preserving the discretion that guides when to use them. Meaningful progress demands ambition and responsibility AI is powerful, but it is also fallible. Algorithms inherit the blind spots of their training data, so unchecked output can reinforce stereotypes or silence voices. Bias tests, diverse review panels and clear opt-out paths are practical safeguards, yet accountability always rests with the people who deploy the tool, not the code itself. With those guardrails in place, artificial intelligence removes the ceiling on what communicators can imagine and deliver. We shift from storytellers who merely pitch ideas to partners who can prototype, test and launch them in a single sprint. The brief is simple: stay curious about AI, anchor every use case in human tension and let empathy guide each decision. AI is not replacing us; it is handing us a wider canvas, a shorter path from insight to influence, and a stronger voice in shaping culture. The advantage belongs to the teams ready to claim that canvas before someone else does. By Palak Mehta, Communications Director, HAVAS Red Middle East.