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Kenvue’s stock tumbled when U.S. President Donald Trump, with Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., standing behind him, declared that its product, Tylenol, leads to autism in children when taken by mothers during pregnancy. As social channels were flooded with misinformation supporting the evidenceless claim, it’s easy to imagine the stock continuing to slide, mirroring the trajectory launched by attacks on Bud Light. Remarkably, the stock recovered after one day, thanks largely to Tylenol’s savvy and almost perfect response to the crisis. Tylenol isn’t the first brand to find itself in President Trump’s crosshairs. It is unlikely to be the last. In this short, midweek episode, Neville and Shel explore what the company got right, and what other companies can do to prepare for their turn in the glare of the presidential spotlight. Links from this episode: The US President Called Your Product Dangerous. What Do You Do Now? – Darden Report Online How Companies Can Respond To Allegations Their Products Are Dangerous Tylenol says old post ‘taken of out context’ by White House  Tylenol maker responds to Trump’s acetaminophen claims Tylenol is Just the Latest Brand Trump Has Picked a Fight With Tylenol’s Maker Shows How to Respond to Crisis Tylenol maker shares rebound a day after Trump’s unfounded claims about its safety Lawsuits against Tylenol’s maker get a boost after Trump’s comments Tylenol Issues Clarification After White House Resurfaces 2017 Tweet on Usage During Pregnancy ‘Highly concerning’: Major medical groups react to Trump’s claim that Tylenol is linked to autism The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript @nevillehobson (00:00) Hi everyone, and welcome to episode number 483 of For Immediate Release. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz (00:07) And this is Shel Holtz in the U.S. If you manage a brand today, here’s a scenario you actually have to plan for. A single, high-profile figure with a massive audience declares your product dangerous without credible evidence. And the story just blows up across cable, X, TikTok, the news. This is not a hypothetical. That’s where Tylenol found itself after President Trump asserted that acetaminophen taken during pregnancy can lead to autism. The claim doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny, but it did what these claims always do. It spread, it stuck, and it spooked people. So what do you do when your product is suddenly the villain of the day? The Darden School at the University of Virginia framed the choice starkly. You can keep your head down and hope the cycle moves on, or you can push back fast, clearly, and repeatedly. Their advice leans hard to option two, anchored in what they call the four Ts. timeliness, transparency, trust, and tenacity. Respond quickly, show your work, over-communicate the facts, and stick with it longer than the news cycle would suggest. Importantly, don’t get into a personality contest with the attacker. Keep it respectful but firm, and put your history, your standards, and your science front and center. Crisis pros will recognize that playbook. Forbes Crisis columnist Edward Siegel made a similar argument the same day. Assume confusion is your default environment. Get your narrative out immediately and synchronize legal, medical, and corporate voices before the vacuum fills with speculation. He also stresses preparation. If you wait to write the plan until you’re trending, you’re already too late. So how did Tylenol’s maker Kenview do? On speed and tone, they moved quickly and they stayed in their lane. In on-air and short-form video responses, they reiterated a constant message. Acetaminophen remains the recommended first-line option for pain and fever in pregnancy when used as directed, and their guidance has not changed. No name-calling, no politics, just reinforcement of established guidance and a promise to keep sharing facts as they have them. They also benefited from credible third parties saying what they couldn’t credibly say about themselves. And I remember this from my days at Allergan. We had a medical advisory board made up of ophthalmologists that we could turn to to make public statements. They didn’t receive money from us. They were volunteers, but they were tied to us. They were familiar with our products and could be very, very helpful as credible third party voices. In the Tylenol case, major medical organizations publicly pushed back on the claim. @nevillehobson (02:39) and Shel Holtz (02:53) emphasizing the lack of evidence for a causal link and the potential risks of not treating fever during pregnancy. That chorus was immediate and visible in mainstream coverage, which matters because parents weren’t going to go spelunking in PubMed in the middle of a scare. They wanted to hear doctors on the six o’clock news. Another thing Kenview got right, they didn’t let market rumors set the narrative. While the stock dipped on day one, as you might expect, It rebounded the next day as cooler heads and clearer information landed. That’s a reminder to communicators that investors are another primary audience in these moments. You can’t let medical misinformation turn into a capital market story because you were slow to brief. There was also a potential booby trap that Kenview navigated reasonably well. An old context-free social post about pregnant women avoiding Tylenol started recirculating. and was seized on by partisan accounts as an aha proof point. The brand clarified the context and restated its guidance. The lesson for the rest of us is that social archeology is part of the crisis prep. Now, you need a rapid old posts review the moment a story breaks so you can get ahead of whatever’s about to be resurfaced. Zooming out, there are broader takeaways for communicators whose brands could be targeted by a political figure or anyone with a megaphone and a base. First, build your science bench before you need it. You want independent credentialed experts ready to validate or correct claims within hours, not days. That means pre-briefing medical societies, key opinion leaders, and credible third party validators about your safety data and your monitoring plan. The Darden piece got it right. Facts alone rarely win the day, but facts delivered by trusted humans stand a fighting chance. Second, Treat employees as a primary audience. In moments like this, they’re your most important ambassadors and your most vulnerable stakeholders. Darden explicitly calls out the need to communicate aggressively with your own employees. Give them the message, the FAQs and the why, and equip managers to handle tough conversations at the school gate, the church picnic, and inside the store aisle. Third, scenario test the politics. This is not a normal product risk issue, it’s identity content. You can expect pylons, boycotts, and gotcha screenshots. Prepare neutral, values-based language that focuses on consumer safety and evidence, not the personalities involved. Resist the temptation to litigate the attacker’s credibility. Let other people do that. In this case, RFK, there are plenty of people piling on him. You don’t need to do that as the brand. Your brand should sound like the adult in the room. Fourth, integrate legal early, but don’t let them throttle your speed. You can say quite a lot quite fast without increasing liability. Reaffirm established guidance linked to authoritative sources, explain how you evaluate safety signals, and spell out what you’re doing next. The clock is your biggest risk variable. Finally, run an always-on listening program that’s tuned not just to your brand terms, but to the themes and communities. that could turn you into the next culture war football. When the first sparks fly, rapid response should include fact cards, short explainers on video and exec posts that can be embedded by newsrooms and creators alike because that’s how information travels now. So what kind of grade would we give Kenview? On the essentials, speed, message discipline, reliance on credible third parties and investor signaling. I think it’s a solid B plus, A minus. There’s room to go further on pre-bunking misinformation with evergreen explainers that can be resurfaced instantly and on employee and retailer toolkits for frontline conversations. But in a modern misinformation storm, their posture, firm, factual, and unflappable, was the right one. And for the rest of us, the homework is clear. Write the plan now, build the bench now. and decide in advance how you’ll sound when that moment comes because at some point for some brand it’s coming. @nevillehobson (07:10) It’s quite a story, isn’t it, Shell? I mean, it’s listening to how you explained it all, thinking this is probably one of those moments for any large brand, I suppose, who could think that could be us because you have a critic in the form of the U.S. president who comes out with things, says things. And as all the reporting I’ve seen talks about with that, shred of car sign evidence to back up his claims. but plenty of factual information has been around for long time that challenge it totally to dismiss it all. Could that happen to, let’s say, know, Ford Motor Company, one of their carts where President Trump is going to say this car is dreadful, they’ve had 50 recalls, which isn’t true, of course, and people have died needlessly through car accidents because they didn’t take care of whatever. The next day or the day after it’s dismissed as but in the meantime, you know, 50 buyers across the US aren’t going to buy that truck anymore. So things like that. It’s that’s the environment, isn’t it? You can’t, you can’t plan for that normally. But we’re not in a normal landscape, are we? If this kind of thing goes on. Shel Holtz (08:16) No, not at all. And the Darden piece did make the point that you need to prepare for boycotts. They’re going to happen in this environment. this response that we saw from Darden and from others in terms of how Kenview, the maker of Tylenol, handled it, focused on products that are science-based. There are other products out there that are more engineering-based or based on some other field. that could easily become targets as well. And we talk about Trump with this type of behavior, but remember this is something that his secretary of health and human services presented to him that then he then presented. And I think what you’re going to see in the post Trump Republican party is respect for his playbook. And you’re going to see this kind of behavior continue. under a prospective president Vance, for example, or at the state level with the governors. And I don’t wanna limit this to the political right. I people who see this working on the extreme left could end up employing the same tactics. You can’t look at this as a communicator, as a political thing, even though that’s exactly what it is. which is why the advice from Darden, which is exactly what Kenview did, was don’t engage at the political level, engage at the scientific level, engage at the fact level, but stay away from pointing fingers or getting into a one-on-one argument with a political figure. @nevillehobson (09:47) The difficulty though, particularly in the United States, I would say, Sheldon, is that we’re at a moment where everything is polarized completely. And so you’re out there with facts, scientific evidence, the works. And there is this group over here who’ve got their spin on the facts and they’ve got loud voices and a lot of people listen to them. potentially, I would argue inclined to listen to that kind of denial, like the anti-vaxxers and all these conspiracy theorists. So we would bring out those kinds of people, in which case, it’s almost like you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. If you don’t say anything, you’re damned. If you do say anything, you’re damned. But I think that that’s the additional challenge. And I would say you still got to go out there with factual scientific backed information or whatever, as advised by the the folks you’ve been quoting. But it’s not a not a pretty place to be a player in. Because it could go horribly wrong. Your jet your attention is on you no matter what. And is it your story that people are paying attention to or the other guy’s story? Or is it a big question mark, people start then questioning all the scientific evidence which has already happened with this. So I seen quite a bit. here in the UK of talk about this in the mainstream media, plus in medical journals, too. The medical journals actually have been extremely forthright in their dismissal of Trump’s claims, which is really mirroring what others are saying in dismissing it. There’s no evidence to prove this. Yet I wonder, as we’ve talked before, and it’s kind of the basics of how you plan a crisis communication. approach, I suppose, where logic isn’t what is going to work. Ultimately, it’s the emotional element. I don’t know what that translates as something like this. You got to stick to your guns, of course. And if you do have facts, you shouldn’t not produce them simply because others criticize them and saying they’re denying them saying this is fake. So and in fact, challenging those people logically just doesn’t make much sense, I think. So it’s probably a storm. Somehow you have to weather. And I think there are examples you mentioned already on how you would do that. But I think you would you would likely be wise to assume or to say that we need to look at the worst case scenario here, not the best case scenario. What’s the worst case that could happen that it turns into a complete trashing of your company and all your brands, for instance. And there’s fake evidence being produced all over that. Yes, it does kill people if they take your product, this kind of thing. So it’s not an enviable place, but that is the landscape, isn’t it? With regard to almost anyone with a brand and a good news story or making a product that’s beneficial to people, there are people coming out of the woodwork who have all sorts of things to say to trash what you’re doing and the fact that your product is not safe at all. It’s a hell of an environment show, that’s a fact. Shel Holtz (12:42) It is, but it’s the environment we’re living in. So being prepared, I think, is critical these days. I didn’t check, and I probably should have. When Tylenol was owned by Johnson & Johnson, they had a credo. It was four stakeholder audiences in the order that the company prioritized them, and patients were first. And you may remember, of course, this is not the first crisis that Tylenol has faced. @nevillehobson (12:45) you Shel Holtz (13:08) Back in the 80s, there was the product tampering in the Chicago area that led to several deaths. And even though we tend to look at this now a little more idealized than the response actually was, it’s still a case study that is taught in business schools everywhere that they eventually pulled the product nationally, even though there was no evidence that. there were any tampered products outside of the Chicago area. And their public statements were that we’re doing this because our credo says that we put patients first and we’re not willing to put anybody at risk. The shareholder, by the way, was last on the credo list. think was employees were second, the communities in which they operate were third and shareholders were last. And their philosophy said, if we take care of the first three shareholders will be just fine. And in fact, when they reintroduced Tylenol, it was with a safety cap that they innovated. And that led a lot of customers of other pain relievers to switch to Tylenol because their product didn’t have a safety cap. By the time the competition caught up and developed their own safety caps, these were all now Tylenol customers. So the shareholders ended up just fine. @nevillehobson (14:12) Hmm. Shel Holtz (14:21) And I like that approach. But the point is that what they ended up appealing to, even though they might not have characterized it this way, was the emotions of the public. It’s, they care about us. And I think as long as you can maintain that emotional connection that we care about you, not just putting out scientific data. And I think this is where a lot of that third party comes in. These people want women to suffer with fevers and pain during pregnancy when there is no evidence that taking Tylenol will hurt. I’m waiting for that first report of somebody who would not take Tylenol, developed a fever and died or miscarried or what have you emerges. You know the media is gonna be all over that when it happens. So again, there’s so many dimensions involved in preparing yourself. The nice thing about @nevillehobson (14:47) Yeah. Shel Holtz (15:10) This story that I don’t think Kenview had to worry about was a lot of the third party reporting. You saw the doctors that the cable networks typically go to when there’s a medical related story and they were so contemptuous of this report that anybody who’s watching and of course the wrong people weren’t watching, but you didn’t need to hear from Kenview in order to understand that This is bunk. I mean, it was third parties who made the point that autism existed before Tylenol did. So if Tylenol is responsible for this, where did all these previous cases come from? And for those who suggest that, well, there has been an increase in the number of autism cases, that’s not true. There’s been an increase in the number of diagnoses because autism is not that old a diagnosis and as more and more doctors. recognize it, they are making that diagnosis. So leaving that information for third parties to convey while you stay in your lane, as Darden put it, I think is a good idea if you’re the type of organization that has those third parties available or already on the hook to go out and speak on your behalf. @nevillehobson (16:20) Yeah, I think one other thought that one of the links you shared is an Adweek report that Yahoo News reported that the headline says it all really, titles just the latest brand Trump has picked to fight with. And there are a handful of things that will be in recent memory for every listener to this podcast. We’ve talked about some of these on previous episodes. John Deere, the agricultural equipment manufacturer. that Trump threatened them with 200 % tariffs on everything that they want to sell in the US if they move manufacturing from Iowa to Mexico because of the tariffs. They went ahead and did it anyway. I’ve not seen what the consequences were for them, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Macy’s, the department store, Mexican immigrants are bringing drugs and bringing crime and were rapists in America. That’s what Trump was saying about that. So that’s a deal with that. Apple, well, they’re talking about manufacturing in China with the phones. Thailand, we’re discussing now. Boeing, talks about them. Jaguar cars, he has strong opinions about their new logo and rebranding. That’s extraordinary for a politician, nevermind someone who’s the president of a country with those kind of opinions. But he’s different kind of person. And I guess the latest probably, this American brand, Cracker Barrel, we have a similar brand here in the UK, but it’s not to be confused with this one, that he talked about that he described it as woke, the rebrand that when they went through this rebranding, they should go back to the old logo, he said on more than one occasion. And people are trying to figure out why why why he bothered him so much. Anyway, it did. And he said they should admit a mistake and go back to the old one and the restaurant chain. did in fact go back to the old logo. So that’s the nature of things. So hence, you’re a big brand, you’ve got high visibility, you need to factor this into your crisis plan. Shel Holtz (18:13) Yeah, it must frustrate a lot of brand managers to hear advice to stay in your lane when the person attacking you is in every lane all at once. We’ll absolutely not stay in his lane. So yeah, and that’ll be a 30 for this episode of Four Immediate Release. @nevillehobson (18:25) Extraordinary.   The post FIR #483: How Tylenol Handled a High-Profile Falsehood appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the impact of AI on small agencies, focusing on the high expectations and possible disappointments it poses. They reference a recent article from The Atlantic, which highlights a study showing that AI can sometimes decrease efficiency. They caution against overhauling business models based solely on AI’s current capabilities, stressing that while AI can assist with tasks and improve efficiency, it cannot fully replace human judgment and creativity. The conversation extends to the challenges of integrating AI without sacrificing the development of new talent and ensuring that the evolving role of AI adds value rather than causing disruption. [read the transcript] The post ALP 284: Avoiding your agency’s own AI bubble appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how to handle situations when the problems affecting an agency’s client relationship stem from external contacts like procurement, IT, or the sales team. They emphasize treating client contacts as allies and not enemies, and provide strategies to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and internal politics. The discussion covers creative problem-solving techniques such as using MSAs, having biweekly calls with VPs of Sales, and understanding cultural differences. The importance of having a collaborative approach and pre-building relationships to effectively manage challenges is also highlighted. [read the transcript] The post ALP 283: What to do when your client contact isn’t the problem appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

We’ve all heard of AI slop by now. “Workslop” is the latest play on that term, referring to low-quality, AI-generated content in the workplace that looks professional but lacks real substance. This empty, AI-produced material often creates more work for colleagues, wasting time and hindering productivity. In the longform FIR episode for September, Neville and Shel explore the sources of workslop, how big a problem it really is, and what can be done to overcome it. Also in this episode: Chris Heuer, one of the founders of the Social Media Club, is at work on a manifesto for the “H Corporation,” organizations that are human-centered. A recent online discussion set the stage for Chris’s work, which he has summarized in a post. Three seemingly disparate studies point to the evolution of the internal communication role. Researchers at Amazon have proposed a framework that can make it as easy as typing a prompt to identify a very specific audience for targeted communication. Communicators everywhere continue to predict the demise of the humble press release, but one public relations leader has had a very different experience. Anthropic and OpenAI have both released reports on how people are using their tools. They are not the same. In his Tech Report, Dan York looks back on TypePad, the blogging platform whose shutdown is imminent; AI-generated summaries of websites from Firefox; and Mastodon’s spin on quote posts. Links from this episode: Neville’s remarks on the human-centered organization, along with Chris Heuer’s original LinkedIn post Building a Shared Vision: Organizations Advancing Human-Centered AI Defining the Human Centered Organization The Birth of the H-Corp The Effects of Enterprise Social Media on Communication Networks AI misinformation and the value of trusted news Corporate Affairs is Ripe for AI Disruption AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable AI “workslop” sabotages productivity, study finds AI isn’t replacing your job, but ‘workslop’ may be taking it over workslop: bad study but excellent word An Explainable Natural Language Framework for Identifying and Notifying Target Audiences In Enterprise Communication How smart brands are delivering Netflix-level personalization with AI We Tested a Press Release in ChatGPT. The Results Changed Everything. LinkedIn post from Sarah Evans on press release performance in AI search results Sarah Evans’ 10 PR myths Ethan Mollick’s LinkedIn post about how people are using AI for work Here’s How People Use AI, Per OpenAI, Anthropic And Ipsos Data OpenAI and Anthropic studied how people use ChatGPT and Claude. One big difference emerged. Anthropic Finds Businesses Are Mainly Using AI to Automate Work How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude – and what the differences tell us Links from Dan York’s Tech Report Typepad is Shutting Down Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal On Firefox for iOS, summarize a page with a shake or a tap Introducing quote posts Quoting other posts – Mastodon documentation The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, October 27. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Shel Holtz:Hi everybody, and welcome to episode number 482 of For Immediate Release. This is our long-form episode for September 2025. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California. Neville Hobson:And hi everyone, I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel Holtz:As I mentioned, this is our long-form episode. That means we’ll be reporting on six topics of interest to communicators. Interestingly, I think all of them are connected either directly or indirectly to artificial intelligence. I also have Dan York here with an interesting report. You and I both have a few things to say about one of the topics that Dan is reporting on. As always with our monthly episode, we have some housekeeping before we jump into the topics. Neville, you’re going to catch us up on the items we reported on since the last episode. And we have some comments on some of these reports. That’s an opportunity to remind everybody that we love your comments—please participate in this podcast by sharing them. It doesn’t have to be about something we reported on; you can introduce a topic. This used to happen all the time in the early days of the show—someone would say, “Why don’t you guys talk about this?” and we would, and it became the content of the show. So please leave a comment on the show notes or on LinkedIn—which is where most of our comments come from these days. People leave a thought or some feedback on our announcement of the new episode. You can also do that on Facebook in multiple places. And you can always go to the website and record a comment—there’s a button that says “Leave voicemail” and you can record a 90-second comment. Or send us an MP3 file to fircomments@gmail.com. Lots of ways to participate in the show, and we really hope you will. We’ll share some of the comments we received in the last month, Neville, as you remind us what we talked about. Neville Hobson:Indeed. September was kind of an odd month because you were on holiday for two weeks and we didn’t do any live recording during that time, but we had a couple of short recordings tucked in our back pocket to publish in the interim. Let’s share what we did since the last monthly episode for August—that was on the 25th of August, episode 478. Our lead story explored when corporate silence backfires and how communicators can help leaders make better choices. We also discussed AI PR deepfakes and more, including Dan York’s report. That was a 90-minute show like this one is likely to be. Episode 479 on the 1st of September—“Hacking AI Optimization vs. Doing the Hard Work.” Amid the rise of GEO, we discussed how brands are seeking workarounds to appear in AI-generated answers, but shortcuts don’t build trust. Old-school PR and marketing still matter. We got a comment on that one, right, Shel? Shel Holtz:We did, from Frank Diaz, who’s become one of our loyal listeners. He said, “This was my conclusion as well. Once I filtered everything…” He shared a checklist on mastering AI citation strategy for SEO on LinkedIn. We’ll include a link in the show notes for context. Neville Hobson:On the 9th of September we published episode 480, “Reflections on AI Ethics and the Role of Communicators.” You had already gone on holiday. This was a conversation between Sylvia Cambie—who was a guest co-host back in July when we interviewed Monsignor Paul Tighe from the Vatican about artificial intelligence—and me. We picked up where that interview left off with reflections on AI dignity, what really matters, and what caught our attention. Interestingly, that episode got more listens and downloads than the interview itself—perhaps because people were catching up after summer. Episode 481 on the 24th of September—so you can see a nearly two-week gap there—“The M-Panic: AI Writing and Misguided Assumptions. Can Tone and Authenticity Survive AI Polish?” We dove into the “M-kerfuffle” that’s had communicators divided much of this year. You also explained how you turned 28 blog posts into a forthcoming book with AI’s help—classic AI-assisted writing in action. We had comments too, didn’t we? Shel Holtz:We did. Daniel Pauling wrote that the dash doesn’t solely come from training data—a point I’d made, saying the reason you see so many dashes is because the training sets include a lot of dash-heavy content. Daniel said it also comes from how generative AI is programmed to be more friendly and what it associates with friendliness. He referenced a post where he went into detail—we’ll include that link. John Cass had a thoughtful comment about how writing wasn’t rigid in the 17th century—Shakespeare even spelled his name multiple ways—arguing that language is a visual representation of speech and we should speak the language of our audience, not the textbook. He suggested anxiety around AI and writing often comes from our best writers, but human creativity is collective. I noted that Chris Penn recently wrote that AI won’t hurt creativity because creative people will keep creating. We saw that on a cruise art auction: people bidding thousands on works by young artists. The creative impulse persists. John replied that’s true, though some high-level creatives feel AI disrupts their thinking—maybe true for a few people; not everyone thinks the same way. Neville Hobson:Good essay-comment from John. And between all of that we recorded a new interview just before you went away—Stephanie Grober in New York, quite an authority on GEO—Generative Engine Optimization. The anchor for the conversation was: is GEO the next SEO, a passing fad, or good comms practice in disguise? We talked about what GEO means for communicators today and what to do about it. That was published on the 16th of September. So we had five podcast episodes since August—not bad, considering you were away half the month. Shel Holtz:Not bad at all. We are a content machine. And that machine continues with Circle of Fellows—the monthly panel among IABC Fellows. I was at sea for this one; Brad Whitworth moderated a discussion about what it means for communicators that hybrid appears to be winning as the preferred workplace configuration. Priya Bates, Ritzi Ronquillo, and Angela Sinickas participated. It’s up on the FIR Podcast Network. The October episode sounds great: number 121. I’ll moderate at noon Eastern on Thursday, October 23. The topic: evolving roles and strategic goals. The description from Anna Willey: communicators are adapting alongside new tools and channels; strategic goals must align with organizational objectives as they impact brand reputation, enhance internal communications, and address ongoing change. Panelists so far: Lori Dawkins, Amanda Hamilton-Atwell, and Mike Klein, with a fourth to be named. You can join live and participate or catch the podcast. That wraps up our housekeeping—we managed to do it in less than 13 minutes. Right after this, we’ll be back with our Topics of the Month. Neville Hobson:Our first topic for September: Throughout this year we’ve returned again and again to one central theme—AI must be about people, not just machines. Whether we were talking about the future of work, managers’ roles in an AI-enabled world, or the Vatican’s perspective on AI ethics (“the wisdom of the heart” in our July interview with Monsignor Paul Tighe), the question has been the same: How do we ensure technology serves humanity rather than the other way around? That’s the context for Chris Heuer’s latest work. Chris is an internet pioneer and serial entrepreneur—many of you will know him from the Social Media Club nonprofit he founded in the early days of social media, which reached 350 cities globally. Building on an online brainstorm Chris led on September 17—more than 50 people connected worldwide to discuss defining human-centered organizations, which I joined and wrote about on LinkedIn—Chris has published a follow-up titled “The Birth of the H-Corp” (H for humanity). It’s a bold attempt to define what organizations owe humanity in the age of AI. The central concern: efficiency has become the dominant corporate narrative. He cites Shopify’s CEO saying managers must prove why AI can’t do the job before hiring another human. We referenced that in an FIR episode this summer. That kind of AI-first thinking risks eroding human dignity. Chris argues for an alternative: organizations must enable humans rather than replace them, reinvest AI gains back into people, and make empathy and ethics structural rather than optional. What’s powerful is the recognition of tensions—for example, how AI can hollow out junior roles and undermine leadership pipelines. Participants flagged cultural sovereignty—the idea that AI shouldn’t just reflect Silicon Valley’s worldview but the diversity of human society. Chris’s goal is to draft an H-Corp manifesto later this year—likely November—likening this to the naming moment of social media: a concept that crystallizes shared ambitions and sparks a broader movement. It won’t be perfect, but it could serve as a north star for organizations that want to put human flourishing at the center of AI adoption. For communicators, this is an important conversation: How do we frame the internal narrative so AI isn’t just about productivity and cost-cutting, but about augmenting human potential? How do we give shape to something like H-Corp so it doesn’t remain an ideal but becomes practical reality? It’s not about resisting AI or slowing progress; it’s about making deliberate choices so organizations put people at the center of change. Will communicators, leaders, and organizations seize the opportunity to shape AI for human flourishing—or let the technology shape us by default? Could H-Corp become a rallying concept as ESG or CSR did—or will it get diluted into corporate sloganeering? What role should communicators play to keep it real and practical? I bet you’ve got ideas. Shel Holtz:Of course—otherwise why would we be here? First, I think AI is less responsible for this situation than the general nature of business, especially in a capitalist society. I’m not going to get philosophical about capitalism—I’m a proud capitalist. I like making money and would like to make more. If the goal of an organization—especially a public corporation with fiduciary responsibilities—is to earn a return for investors, then when AI comes along it makes complete sense that leaders ask, “How does this help us maximize returns?” Reducing costs and staff and having a machine work 24/7—of course that’s where leaders go first. It doesn’t mean that’s what organizations should do, but I get why they do it. Also, with any new technology, the first thing we do is what we were already doing—but better. The earliest uses no one had thought of come later. I don’t think generative AI has been around long enough for that next phase yet. We’re still using it to do what we’ve been doing; later we’ll discover new, more human-centered applications. For some organizations that will come; for others, it won’t—they’ll stay focused on maximizing profit. Another issue: most organizations aren’t tackling AI strategically in its early days. There’s ample data showing people aren’t looking at this holistically. I was just talking at my company about the entry-level construction job—project engineer. Much of that role may be automated. Submittals, for example, take time and expertise; AI could produce them in minutes with the right inputs. Does that mean fewer project engineers? Our conversation was: how do we redefine the role so they still learn what they need to move up—project manager, project director, superintendent, whatever? The job won’t be the same, but it remains foundational. Same in communications: the entry-level comms role won’t be the same job in five years. Does the job go away—or do we rethink it? Smart organizations will rethink it—that’s a humanistic approach because we’re not dispensing with the role; we’re redefining it. Neville Hobson:It’s a big topic. I don’t disagree that some companies will shut their eyes to anything beyond “we use this to make money.” But the conversation—at the heart of what Chris is talking about—is helping organizations see the people. Language matters, too—how we talk about “replacing” versus “augmenting” can devalue human work. Another argument from the brainstorm: human-centered talk often defaults to privileged voices and excludes marginalized groups. There’s a perception that there’s one version of AI—English, global north. What about the global south? Some countries have launched Spanish-language chatbots relevant to their populations; ChatGPT may not be the relevant tool for them. We should stimulate conversations in organizations: “Yes, but think about this as well.” That can create discord, but it’s necessary. This idea is worth promoting: don’t devalue people. Put them first. Yes, aim for profit—but how do we help our people help us make that profit? People suffer in change; they’re often last in line when tech is deployed. Let’s bring empathy back into organizations. The landscape is changing at light speed—new capabilities, “pulse” updates to mobiles, etc. I think Chris Heuer’s offering could become a rallying concept. With influential voices like the Vatican and others globally, maybe it gathers steam. Shel Holtz:It could. My skepticism is about incentives. Leaders are obliged to produce maximum returns. How do we connect the dots so they see something in this change aligned with their goals? That’s what I want to see in the manifesto—most manifestos dwell on what’s wrong and not how to fix it. Neville Hobson:Right—so the H-Corp manifesto expected in November becomes the template to address those questions: how do we include X, Y, Z? I sensed a groundswell of willingness on the Sept. 17 call. It’s a small group; getting the word out may persuade others to get involved. You’ve got to start somewhere. This could be a rallying concept. Shel Holtz:I’ll predict that in November this will be a theme for one of our FIR episodes. Neville Hobson:Maybe we interview someone—perhaps Chris. Shel Holtz:Could be Chris. Neville Hobson:If this strikes a chord, go to the Humanizing AI Substack (link in show notes), read Chris’s post introducing the H-Corp manifesto, and see if you want to get involved. It’s open—share ideas and see what happens. Shel Holtz:One thread running through much of our coverage is how digital tech is reshaping organizational communication, minute by minute. Three new reports over the last couple of weeks are fascinating on their own; together they create a big picture communicators must grapple with. First: a major new study of enterprise social media (internal platforms like Slack, Teams, Viva Engage). Researchers studied 99 organizations adopting Microsoft Viva Engage (which grew out of Yammer). Enterprise social media made communication networks denser, more connected, and more democratic. Employees didn’t just talk to the same people—they formed new ties, especially weak ties across teams that spark ideas. Leaders and employees connected more directly, and influence was more distributed. Viva Engage, unlike siloed Teams channels, enables more open conversations around broader themes. This change breaks down silos and fosters innovation—critical when hybrid/remote work can leave people isolated. Second: Boston Consulting Group estimates more than 80% of corporate affairs work, including communication, could be augmented or even automated by AI. The biggest gains come when organizations redesign processes around AI—not just bolt it on. For communicators: think proactively not just about writing faster, but re-imagining workflows with AI in the mix. Third: VoxEU points to a serious risk: as AI makes it easier and cheaper to produce plausible misinformation, the value of trusted, credible information goes up—externally and internally. If employees can’t tell what’s credible—about competitors, market conditions, or even their own company—their decision-making is compromised. If misinformation creeps into internal channels, it can spread quickly through the very networks making us more connected. Put together: enterprise social media can make networks open and innovative, but they’re vulnerable if we don’t ensure accuracy and trust. Hovering over that is BCG’s reminder that AI will disrupt a huge portion of what communicators do. The challenge: if we don’t take responsibility for credibility and quality, AI will amplify misinformation and mistrust. The opportunity: use AI thoughtfully to improve connection and personalization while leaning into our role as stewards of trusted information. Connection without credibility is fragile; credibility without connection is limited. Our job is to deliver both. Neville Hobson:Big challenge. The VoxEU report on AI misinformation and trusted news stood out. One interesting finding: once misinformation was identified, people didn’t disengage—they consumed more. Treated individuals were more likely to maintain subscriptions months later. The report’s conclusion: when the threat of misinformation becomes salient, the value of credible news increases. How do you put that in place inside an organization? Shel Holtz:I remember my first corporate comms job at ARCO. Our weekly employee paper had bylines so employees knew who to call with story ideas. Bylines also establish credible sources—names employees learn to trust. As networks flood with information, people will gravitate to known credible voices. The same is true externally with content marketing: put a person behind the content so audiences recognize trustworthy outputs. We’ll need to build credibility with our reporters, thought leaders, and SMEs—internally and externally—so they become beacons of trust amid misinformation. Neville Hobson:VoxEU (focused on media) says if outlets maintain trust, the rise of synthetic content becomes an opportunity: as trust grows scarcer, its value rises, and audiences may be more willing to pay. Translate internally: employees won’t “pay,” but they will give attention to reliable, trustworthy writing—especially when the author is identified and credible. That seems like common sense. Shel Holtz:Agreed. Some employees don’t care what’s going on; they just do their job and go home. But if they’re overwhelmed with plausible-sounding contradictions, internal communications can become the trusted voice. People who didn’t pay attention before may start following channels and authors they’ve come to trust—if we consistently produce credible content. Neville Hobson:One line from VoxEU’s conclusion fits perfectly: the threshold to trustworthiness rises with the volume and sophistication of misinformation, meaning media outlets can’t stand still; they must continually invest in helping readers distinguish fact from fabrication, keeping pace with AI. Fits internally, too. Shel Holtz:Combine that with the other two reports: use enterprise social networks as channels for credible information and conversation, and use the BCG disruption to redefine our work so our time remains valuable even as 80% of tasks change. Neville Hobson:Okay, another buzzword: “work slop”—content that looks polished but is shallow or misleading, created with AI and dumped on colleagues to sort out. Harvard Business Review argued work slop is a major reason companies aren’t seeing ROI from AI; 40% of employees are dealing with it. But there’s a critique in Pivot to AI saying the data came from an unfiltered BetterUp survey—calling HBR’s article an unlabeled advertorial that shifts blame onto workers while pitching enterprise tools. So two threads: “work slop” is a brilliant label for a real problem; but some coverage may itself be work slop. Questions: Is work slop a real productivity killer or just a catchy buzzword? What responsibility lies with leadership vs. employees? And how should we treat research that blurs into marketing? Shel Holtz:I think it’s real, though I don’t know that it’s as dire as painted. The first time I saw “work slop” was from Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn. He echoed Pivot to AI’s point: the term can shift blame onto employees told to “be more productive with AI” without leaders doing the hard work of rethinking processes or defining good use. Poor output becomes “AI’s fault”—that’s not leadership. For communicators, we should advocate responsible AI use from the top down, not just coach employees to cope. Also, this is new-tech déjà vu. Remember desktop publishing? Suddenly every department cranked out a newsletter—because they could. It created information overload until companies set guidelines. Today, many orgs haven’t offered training, guidance, or frameworks for AI. People are experimenting—good!—but without prompt skills or evaluation skills, they’ll create work slop. We’ll see a lot of it until organizations get strategic about AI and define expectations and verification. We even did an episode on “verification” becoming a role—someone checking outputs for accuracy and credibility. We’ll see if that shakes out, but that’s where work slop comes from. I don’t think it’s a long-term problem; it will resolve like the 86 departmental newsletters did. Neville Hobson:How do we address the eruption of AI-generated content? Even if it isn’t outright wrong, it’s too much to read—hurting productivity. Shel Holtz:Organizations need a strategic approach. Our CEO often says there will be a day the switch flips; if you’re not ready, you’re irrelevant. The orgs allowing prodigious work slop haven’t reached—or acted on—that conclusion. They need governance, training, and clear “assist vs. automate” boundaries. Neville Hobson:Thanks very much, Dan—terrific report. TypePad caught my attention. I was on TypePad from 2004, moved to WordPress in 2006, kept TypePad as an archive until 2021. Interesting—and urgent—to hear it’s ending. Migration is easy except images; that’s not trivial. I know three people still on TypePad with no idea the door’s about to shut. Good callout. Shel Holtz:I was never a TypePad user, but many early influential blogs were there—Heather Armstrong’s Dooce, PostSecret, Freakonomics before it became a podcast. We’ve been doing this long enough to cover birth, life, and death. Neville Hobson:We have. Dan also mentioned Mastodon introducing commenting—probably a big deal. I’m not hugely active there. What do you think? Shel Holtz:I still have a Mastodon instance—interested to dig in. I was more intrigued by the Vimeo item. They’ve struggled to define a niche in YouTube’s world—often pitching private, high-quality business video hosting. I still get pitched. But one constant headache in internal comms is getting the right message to the right people. If you’ve ever sent a company-wide update because you weren’t sure who needed it—or spent hours hunting down the right list—you know the pain. That’s why a research paper from Amazon’s Reliability and Maintenance Engineering team caught my eye: “An explainable natural language framework for identifying and notifying target audiences in enterprise communication.” In plain terms: a system that lets you ask in natural language who should get your message, then the AI not only finds the audience but explains how it got there. Example: “Reach all maintenance technicians working with VendorX’s conveyor belts at European sites.” The system parses that, queries a knowledge graph of equipment, people, and locations, and returns the audience—with reasoning (“here’s how we matched VendorX… here’s how we identified European facilities…”). Explainability is critical; in safety contexts you can’t trust a black box. Implications: we struggle with over- and under-communication. We over-broadcast because we don’t trust lists; we miss people who need the info. A framework like this could make targeting as easy as writing a sentence—with transparency you can trust. It mirrors marketing’s move from “Hi, {FirstName}” to real context-aware personalization. Employees aren’t different from customers: they don’t want spam; they want relevant comms. Challenges: privacy concerns about graphing people and work, the need to validate reasoning, and data quality (titles, records). But it’s a blueprint for rethinking audience targeting—imagine HR or IT change comms targeting precisely with explainability. It’s research, not a product yet, but communicators should watch this closely. Neville Hobson:Good explanation. I couldn’t find a simple one online—Amazon’s site doesn’t surface it well. Amusingly, an AI Overview explained it best, which is a good illustration of why traditional search is fading. My question: is this live at Amazon? Shel Holtz:I don’t think so—it’s a framework for consideration. Presumably they’d build it for Amazon first, then maybe market or license it. If you’ve worked in internal comms, you know targeting is hard; the info you need often isn’t accessible. This gives you the ability to do it—and verify it. I can’t wait to try it someday. Neville Hobson:Calendar marker set. Share that AI Overview with me—I’ll screenshot it. Shel Holtz:Copy and paste works, too. Neville Hobson:In recent episodes we’ve explored how the press release keeps reinventing itself. Far from dead, it moved from media distribution to SEO—and now, according to Sarah Evans (partner and head of PR at Zen Media), into a generative-AI visibility engine. In a long read, she describes testing a press release about Zen Media acquiring Optimum7, distributed via GlobeNewswire, then tracking how it was picked up not just by news outlets but by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Meta AI. Within six hours, ChatGPT cited it 40 times; Meta’s external agents 17 times; Perplexity Bot and Applebot twice. Evans said there were 61 documented AI mentions in total in that period. Implications: press releases aren’t just reaching journalists or Google—they’re feeding AI systems people use to ask questions and make decisions. The key metric becomes: is it retrievable when AI is asked a critical question in our space? We’ve covered this angle a few times—from “Is PR dead (again)?” to the reinvention of releases for algorithms—and now this: the release as a tool for persistent retrievability and authority in the age of AI. If AI engines are the new gatekeepers, how should communicators rethink writing and measurement? What do you think, Shel? Shel Holtz:I’m glad you’re citing Sarah Evans—she’s terrific. We should invite her on the interview show. In another post—“10 PR myths I’m seeing”—she debunks “Press releases don’t matter.” She says they matter more than ever. We’re seeing early results with releases averaging about 285 citations in ChatGPT within 30 days. That suggests LLMs treat press releases as credible sources—especially when picked up in reputable places. She also talks structured information. Gini Dietrich recently suggested having a page on your site not linked anywhere—meant for AI crawlers—with structured/markdown versions of the content so AI can better understand and apply it. Bottom line: press releases aren’t going anywhere. Every time someone proclaims them dead, they persist. (Side rant: embargoes aren’t real unless we agreed in advance.) Neville Hobson:I ranted about embargoes recently too. One question: what does retrievability mean for communicators? If AI engines, not journalists or search engines, arbitrate visibility, how do PR teams measure success differently? Are AI citations more valuable than traditional pickups? Shel Holtz:Both are valuable. Search has declined, but not to zero—not even to 50%. People still search. Some haven’t adopted AI for search; some queries are better served by ten links than an overview. (When we were in Rome, I searched for restaurants open before 7 p.m.—classic Google links job.) Sarah Evans’s myth list also says “Choose traditional or modern PR” is false—the strongest strategies use a dual pathway. As Mitch Joel says, “and,” not “instead of.” Neville Hobson:Worth reading Sarah’s Substack—and the link you’ll put in the notes—to make you think. Shel Holtz:Absolutely. I’ll probably be doing a press release in the next week or two—can’t say more, but it’s coming. One more debate: how people actually use AI. Ethan Mollick argues people lean on AI for higher-level cognitive tasks—framing, sense-making, brainstorming—rather than just automating grunt work. Recent usage studies from OpenAI and Anthropic offer fresh data. OpenAI’s analysis of ChatGPT usage shows augmentation—writing, editing, summarizing, brainstorming, decision support. “Asking” (decision support) has become the largest slice—aligning with “thinking partner.” Anthropic paints a different enterprise picture for Claude: businesses use it chiefly to automate workflows, coding, math-heavy tasks, document processing, and reporting pipelines. Automation exceeds augmentation; some quantify ~three-quarters of enterprise use as automation patterns. Zooming out, Forbes’s overview with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ipsos notes adoption is broadening fast, trust is uneven, and behaviors vary by context. ZDNet frames it succinctly: ChatGPT is mostly used for writing and decision support (often non-work or para-work tasks), while Claude skews toward structured enterprise automation—coding and back-office flows. So where does that leave Mollick’s claim? Both realities are true depending on the user and context. Among general knowledge workers, AI is a thinking companion; among engineering/operations teams and API-wired apps, AI acts as an automation substrate. Implications for communicators: AI is in the room at the idea stage—become editors, synthesizers, and standard-setters. Automation is marching into comms-adjacent workflows—govern quality, provenance, and accountability. Don’t pick a side; design for both—declare the “assist vs. automate” boundary, instrument the pipeline with checks and tags, build a “thinking partner” prompt bench, and mind the labor story by narrating changes transparently. Neville Hobson:Good advice. ZDNet’s split between personal and non-personal use was interesting. I’m a mixed user—lots of research that’s kind of work-related. I use ChatGPT mostly; not Claude lately. One note: I used ChatGPT for coding when I rebuilt my website on Ghost—editing theme templates with Handlebars. ChatGPT was astonishingly good—especially after GPT-5—at brainstorming workarounds and generating CSS/JS tweaks that worked perfectly on first publish. Claude also pinpointed issues following theme dev instructions. For a non-coder, that was huge confidence. These tools were brilliant alongside Docker and VS Code. I’m impressed. Shel Holtz:No question ChatGPT does very well with code; all frontier LLMs do. Claude currently tops some benchmarks (SWE-Bench, HumanEval, etc.) and is marketed heavily to developers, with strong APIs and tool integrations. OpenAI pushes ChatGPT more broadly—consumer and enterprise—so you see “what should I wear tonight?” and recipes alongside enterprise tasks. I’ve read that Gen Z uses AI to make basic day-to-day decisions—fascinating. Neville Hobson:The report says ChatGPT usage hit 700 million weekly users as of July. Growth is relatively faster in low- and middle-income countries. Early users were ~80% men; now about 48%, with more active users having typically feminine first names (their method). Useful metrics—but what does it mean to the average communicator? Hopefully they don’t walk away thinking “ChatGPT is only for coding.” Shel Holtz:Right—the point is not either/or. There are two valid use modes—collaborative and automated. Provide resources, tools, policies, guardrails, and governance so people can use both modes effectively. You can’t have a Wild West; you need standards you can support. But beware of swinging too far. I spoke to a company restricting staff to an internal AI that can’t do what NotebookLM does—hamstringing themselves. Organizations need to be pragmatic. And that will wrap up episode 482, our long-form episode for September 2025. Neville Hobson:Market conditions will impact that approach, I bet. Okay. Shel Holtz:Right now we’re planning to record our long-form October episode on Saturday the 25th or Sunday the 26th—depends on Neville’s schedule. Either works for me. That episode will drop Monday, October 27. We’ll have short mid-week episodes in between, maybe even an interview—we’re lining up one or two. Until then, that will be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #482: What Will It Take to Stop the Slop? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

As hybrid work transitions from pandemic necessity to permanent business strategy, communication professionals face a dual challenge that’s reshaping the entire profession. Not only must they master the art of reaching and engaging a distributed workforce scattered across home offices, co-working spaces, and traditional workplaces, but they must also learn to function effectively as hybrid communication teams themselves. In the September Circle of Fellows panel, four IABC Fellows and moderator Brad Whitworth, SCMP, IABC Fellow, will explore both sides of the hybrid communication equation. You’ll discover strategies for creating inclusive, impactful messaging that resonates equally with remote and in-office employees, avoiding the common pitfall of defaulting to those who are physically present. The panel will share proven approaches for maintaining a consistent brand voice and organizational culture when your audience is experiencing your company in fundamentally different ways. Equally important, the discussion will delve into the operational realities of leading communication teams in a hybrid environment. Learn how to foster collaboration and creativity when your team members may never be in the same room, how to maintain the strategic thinking and relationship-building that drive communication excellence, and how to ensure that hybrid work enhances rather than hampers your team’s ability to serve the organization. Whether you’re leading a fully distributed team, managing hybrid operations, or advising executives on how to communicate with their own hybrid workforces, this conversation will provide practical frameworks and real-world insights from communication professionals who are successfully navigating this new reality. About the panel: Priya Bates is a senior communication executive who provides strategic internal communication counsel in order to ensure leaders, managers, and employees understand the strategy, believe in the vision, act in accordance with the values, and contribute to business results. She is president of Inner Strength Communications in Toronto and previously served as senior director of Internal Communications at Loblaw Companies Limited.   Ritzi Villarico-Ronquillo, APR, IABC Fellow, is a Fellow of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), an Accredited in Public Relations professional, and a senior leader in Philippine organizations and in IABC. She held key roles as VP for Communication and Corporate Affairs in the manufacturing sector, and was PR Head for Communication and Publications, Advertising and Special Events, and General Public Programs in the energy sector. A multi-awarded communication professional, she has experience across corporate, community, associations, advocacy, and academia. With more than four decades of experience to date, she is a consultant, adjunct faculty, professional lecturer, training professional, speaker, and mentor on communication and public relations in prestigious educational institutions in the Philippines. She is a graduate of the country’s national university, the University of the Philippines’ College of Media and Communication, a center of excellence in the field. She is a contributing columnist of PR Matters, a weekly column of IPRA Philippines in the Business Mirror, a national broadsheet and online news platform. Angela Sinickas is the founder of Sinickas Communications, which has worked with companies, organizations, and governments in 32 countries on six continents. Her clients include 25% of the Forbes Top 100 largest global companies. Before starting her own consulting firm, she held positions from editor to vice president in for-profit and government organizations and worked as a senior consultant and practice leader at Hewitt and Mercer. She is the author of a manual, How to Measure Your Communication Programs (now in its third edition), and chapters in several books. Her 150+ articles in professional journals can be found on her website, www.sinicom.com. Her work has been recognized with 21 international-level Gold Quill Awards from IABC, plus her firm was named IABC Boutique Agency of the Year in 2015. She holds a BS degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MS in Leadership from Northeastern University. The post Circle of Fellows #120: Hybrid is Winning. What Does That Mean for Communicators? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel dive into one of the hottest debates in communication today: what happens to tone and authenticity when artificial intelligence steps into the writing process? From the surprisingly heated arguments over the humble em-dash to fresh research on AI’s “stylometric fingerprints,” we explore whether polished AI-assisted prose risks losing the human voice that builds trust. Along the way, we look at how publishers like Business Insider are normalizing AI for first drafts, how communicators are redefining authenticity, and how Shel used AI to turn years of blog posts into a forthcoming book. Links from this episode: Human-AI Collaboration or Academic Misconduct? Measuring AI Use in Student Writing Through Stylometric Evidence Distinguishing AI-Generated and Human-Written Text Through Psycholinguistic Analysis Some people think AI writing has a tell — the em dash. Writers disagree. AI is breaking my heart: Why authentic writing matters more than polished words The Em-Dash Responds to the AI Allegations Business Insider reportedly tells journalists they can use AI to draft stories The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript Shel Holtz (00:01) Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 481 of Four Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. @nevillehobson (00:08) And I’m Neville Hobson. In this episode of For Immediate Release, we’re going to explore the question of tone and authenticity when artificial intelligence becomes part of the writing process. That seems to be a bit of a hot topic these days from what I see online. AI tools don’t just generate text. They also polish, rewrite, and shift tone to make communication sound warmer, more professional, or more concise. But what happens to authentic voice when AI smooths the edges? Do we risk losing individuality, nuance and trust if everything starts to sound the same? We’ll talk about that right after this. It’s a debate playing out among communicators. This year, the humble M-dash has become a flashpoint. Some insist that overusing M-dashes is a dead giveaway of AI altered text. Others push back saying that’s nonsense and unfairly stigmatizes a perfectly good mark of punctuation. Washington Post ran a feature in April with the headline, Some people think AI writing has a tell. The M-dash writers disagree. Then in August, Brian Phillips wrote a lyrical defense in the ringer. pleading, stop AI shaming our precious kindly M-Dashes, please. And McSweeney’s even joined him as satire, publishing the M-Dash response to the AI allegations written from the dashes own point of view. That is really, really very amusing, worth a read. The fact that such debates exists highlights how sensitive people are to the signals of authenticity in writing. Fresh research in 2025 suggests this is more than speculation. Some recent studies show that AI leaves stylometric fingerprints in writing that can be detected, raising questions about authorship and voice. A stylometric fingerprint is the unique combination of statistical linguistic features within a piece of text that identifies its author much like a human fingerprint. AI can make writing clearer and more polished but risks homogenizing style and raising ethical questions. Beyond academia, commentators argue that polished words without voice risk-leaving communication hollow. And while researchers are busy analyzing stylometry and psycholinguistics, communicators are having a very different kind of debate about punctuation. So while academics study the fingerprints AI leaves on writing, the popular imagination has latched onto something much simpler, the punctuation choices we make. The M-debate may be tongue in cheek, but it speaks to a serious point. How sensitive we’ve become to the signals of authenticity in text right down to a single line on the page. For communicators, the challenge is not whether to use AI, that ship has sailed, but how to preserve authenticity when tone shifting tools are in the mix. The call to action is to define what authenticity means in your context, decide which writing tasks AI should support, and ensure human voice and accountability remain front and center. In the end, and authenticity aren’t about perfectly polished words. They’re about whether people believe there’s a human voice and accountability behind the message. Your thoughts, Shale? Shel Holtz (03:19) I have a lot of thoughts on this, ⁓ beginning with, well, at least it’s not the Oxford comma, because that’s a source of debate without artificial intelligence. The dash has found its way into AI outputs because of the AI inputs. The training sets include this massive corpus of writing that has been scraped from the web. @nevillehobson (03:28) Don’t start on that. Shel Holtz (03:49) that includes dashes. This is what it learned from. It saw a lot of ⁓ dashes used in writing, and that’s a pattern that it recognizes. It recognizes where they’re used and implements it in the outputs it creates. It did not think to itself, you know, I haven’t seen many dashes in my training set. That’s a shame. I’m going to start using more of those. That’s absurd. When I was in college, I had a part-time job setting type. Yeah, I’m old enough that I actually set type. And I remember learning when to use the ⁓ dash based on the copy that I was transcribing into typeset. And there were a lot of them, even back then, when most people were still working on typewriters. So I think this notion that it’s a tell is ridiculous. It’s, as you quoted somebody saying, a perfectly serviceable bit of punctuation. But let’s go beyond this notion of punctuation. mean, leave it to communicators where we have some really weighty issues to deal with that we’re going to spend most of our time talking about punctuation. I think this is one of the reasons leaders don’t take communicators very seriously. They’re thinking about business decisions and we’re thinking about ⁓ letting and kerning and things like that. We really need to get more focused on business outcomes and how communication and the use of AI contributes to that. This is what the Business Insider has done. Business Insider, I don’t know if you saw this, it’s a very recent announcement, have ⁓ officially given permission to their journalists to use AI to write the first drafts of their articles. They were already… @nevillehobson (05:44) Yeah. Shel Holtz (05:47) allowed to use AI for research, but not for any of the drafts they produced. Now they can produce the first draft. Now, why was that decision made? I’m not privy to what was going on in the mind of the president of Business Insider who made this decision and communicated it through internal memo to her staff. But I have to believe a couple of things are in play. First of all, journalism is in financial difficulties and you need fewer people to crank out more stories. And if you can get it done faster by having AI generate a first draft, you then go in and fact check and clean up and apply your own writing to, I’ve done this, I’ve done first drafts in AI. And by the time I’m done rewriting, it’s a completely different piece. Still took me about an hour and a half less than it would have if I had had to sit there and write the first draft. I don’t do that for every kind of article or other material that I need to produce, but on some things it just makes sense and it makes life easier. But the other reason I think Business Insider decided to go down this road is because AI is getting better at producing these kinds of drafts and it’s going to continue to get better. In the world of business, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience Neville, I know I have, is outside of the world of communication when you are dealing with people in other parts of the business. And I don’t mean this in any sort of pejorative way. This is not an insult. These people are brilliant when it comes to the areas of specialization that are the focus of their jobs. But they can’t write their way out of a wet paper bag. They’re terrible, terrible writers. And if using AI can help them write a memo, write an email, write a report, write an article, better than they could have on their own, I think we’re at a point where that’s fine. And as I say, it’s going to continue to improve. If AI can generate a good first draft now, how many months or years before it can generate the good final draft? I heard Casey Newton talking about this on Hartford saying, yeah, maybe ⁓ there’s not going to be work for us journalists anymore when the AI can write all the drafts. don’t think that’s necessarily the case because the research still involves talking to people and that sort of thing. the writing with AI is getting to the point where I think this is a very transitive conversation that we’re having about authenticity and human writing. think AI is fully capable of doing this in a lot of circumstances and we need to stop our hand wringing about it and figure out how to do it well. So that it produces the best results we can possibly deliver for our clients and our companies @nevillehobson (08:50) I agree. But we’re talking about human beings here who don’t exhibit some of that sometimes. I think the key thing to me is this kind of phrase I found last on my own mind, AI assisted writing. That’s actually pretty accurate phrase to describe in a sense what we’re talking about here. The issue of tone and authenticity is really the point that I’m keen to explore, where voices more than grammar, for instance, AI can clean up text, sure, it can improve text. And you could argue that’s a subjective way, phrase, improve. Others might not see it as improvement. And therein, you get into rabbit holes, without question, which is where we’re at in a lot of this, I think. But AI can clean up text. But I think authenticity demonstrates itself through word choices, rhythm. even the imperfections. I did something the other day that ChatGPT5 assisted me with, and I thought about this when I mentioned that. Did I assist it or did it assist? No, it assisted me because I asked it to do things. And I noted, kind of taken aback slightly, that on the first draft of what it did, it told me what it was going to do. And it said, I’m going to give this to you in your tone of voice. And it did. And I read this, goodness, I could have written this myself. And that did take me back a bit. Maybe I’d not noticed that before. But that example also prompted a lot of my thinking into leading up to this discussion today. Because tone ⁓ and authenticity or rather tone, yeah, I mean, it is authenticity. even though the debate is still there about what defines authenticity, I’ve had discussion that with lot of people is what do mean authentic? What does that actually mean? And it means different things to different people. I think this discussion or debate or whatever we might call describe it is likely to be one of those never ending ones, the dash, you mentioned the Oxford comma, that’s been around for decades, it’s still a major issue for some people. But being clear on this, And for the reasons I think are quite clear, you mentioned, you know, the large language models, they scrape all this stuff off the off the internet, and it’s got m dashes in, it’s got all this stuff. No one really noticed that until recently. Most people don’t even think about that. I see writing and I even used to use this where I didn’t do m dashes, because that’s not in my background of writing. I do, for instance, on a keyboard. using WordPerfect back in the day, I might do double hyphen that would convert that into an M dash. I never thought of that even, I didn’t even think about, hey, that’s an M dash, I didn’t even notice. So I don’t like M dashes, actually, the formal way people use them, or the historical way which I see AI doing the same, you got a word, there’s another word, and there’s an M dash in between, and then they’re touching the word. I don’t like it. I don’t like the look of it. So I don’t use M dashes, I use N dashes mostly. when I do my writing. So this looks neater in my mind and I don’t care about it’s some ⁓ grammar geek is looking at that thing here that alters the meaning of what you’ve written. No, it doesn’t. Shel Holtz (12:19) Yeah, and just to point out when I was doing typesetting, and I don’t remember what the rules were because I was 19 at the time, but there were definitely rules about the M dash is used in these conditions and the M dash in those conditions. I don’t remember what they were, but they existed. @nevillehobson (12:22) Sure. I know, of course there are rules, of course there are rules. So, but today in 2025, we’re looking at something that is, I guess, out of out of anyone’s control. Now, this this thing will evolve the language. I’m pretty certain of that, particularly. And typically we talk about the English language. The same thing applies in other languages, but English language as the world’s most spoken language. meaning not native, it doesn’t matter, second language, third language doesn’t matter. It’s different everywhere. And so the rules are shifting. So, you know, I look at ⁓ the economist guides, the APs guide and all this, and indeed, I’ve got a copy of the AP guide from 15 years ago. don’t think anyone follows that now. It’s different. It’s different what you see now. So the ⁓ the web we’re at now is ⁓ beyond ⁓ can you say the the use of AI? I mean, it’s a given, as I mentioned in my intro, whether to use AI that ship has sailed long time ago. But we’re talking about preserving authenticity that exercises a lot of people in right, hence the criticism. I did read a piece by ⁓ I’ve forgotten who it was. It might have been Anne Handley, I think might have been the grammar girl actually talking about this recently. That’s right, right, exactly. Shel Holtz (14:00) That would be Minyung Fogarty. @nevillehobson (14:04) that ⁓ was pretty ⁓ bullish about the use of this in ways that we shouldn’t be wasting energy and time talking about this. Yet there are many people, because I see them talking about it online and social networks, who are convinced that an end dash anywhere they see an AI has written it. And I don’t think we’re to be able to get rid of that anytime soon. In which case, my advice is just do not worry about that. No one, know, right, ignore them. Shel Holtz (14:28) Yeah, ignore them. Ignore them. I recently finished the first draft of a book. people who have been following writing. Oh, no, I’ve finished lots and lots of books reading, no, writing. This is a book on employee communication. And it is based on a series of 28 blog posts I wrote based on a framework I developed about 10 or 11 years ago. @nevillehobson (14:39) Do you mean reading it or writing it? Reading it or writing it? Writing it. Right, okay. Shel Holtz (14:58) to aid me in the consulting work I was doing at the time. I wrote all these blog posts before AI was available to help you write. So they’re all in my voice, but they’re blog posts. They’re not book chapters. So I didn’t have the time between my full-time gig and FIR and a couple of volunteer activities that I have to sit and rewrite everything. I started, I tried, and it was just way too time consuming. And I was listening to Chris Penn talk about how he did a book that Amazon could not challenge him that it was his, even though he leaned heavily on AI for the work. I didn’t do what he did because I already had a first draft with those blog posts, but I adapted his concept. So here’s what I did. I first created a very hefty document that contained a lot of what I have written. ⁓ I still had PDFs of a couple of the books I had written before. I had all of my blog posts, ⁓ many, many articles, this type of thing, even transcripts from some FIR episodes. And I put them in a PDF. And then I created a document ⁓ that said, these are approaches I take to writing. These are words and phrases that I use. I do a lot of parenthetical statements. And here are things that AI tends to do in writing that I never do and don’t do any of this. And then I created a gem over on Gemini called Write Like Shell. And I loaded both of those documents into it. This was just for this book. And then chapter by chapter, and I started off by giving it the instruction that I’ve got 28 blog posts. I need to turn them into chapters of a business book. I also need to update case studies because many of these are 11, 12, 13 years old and no longer relevant. And I need to come up with the kinds of elements that you see recurring in chapters of a business book. So I’m going to give you my blog post one at a time using these documents that I have shared, my corpus of my writing and my instructions on my writing and AI writing and how to apply that. Rewrite this post. as a book chapter. And I was knocked out at how well it did. I still needed to spend an hour on editing and rewriting and making revisions. But I ended up doing that for 28 chapters. Is that an AI written book or is that a shell written book? I would argue that that’s my book. It based what it did on my writing. It did its new version based on how I write. And then I went back and made sure it was my writing. @nevillehobson (17:48) Right. Shel Holtz (17:55) So, you know, when we talk about using AI to write, the question is, what is your process? Are you saying write this and then you go publish it? I would never do that, but I think there are a lot of people who do. @nevillehobson (18:03) Right. No, no, ⁓ I agree with you. In fact, what you described is to my mind fits precisely the the label of AI assisted writing. That in my mind, what you’ve just explained is what’s the difference between what you did and between what you might have done if you’d hired a human being assistant to help you do this? What’s the difference? The AI is faster. Is it accurate? Well, you only you will know that and you’re going to review it all anyway. And this to me is is is totally fine. And you’ve got no you would have no alarm about well, should I kind of write this chunky paragraph explaining that I’ve done it like this? No. Why? Why would you do that? Because similar tools have existed until now that were nowhere near as good as this. I mean, I think if some of the grammar assistance you get from even in Microsoft Word back in the day, we’re Grammarly now that’s evolving that uses AI. And it’s, ⁓ you know, we got all these tools. Right, you’ve got all this there, which kind of neatly circles back to the main issue here, which is tone and authenticity, how do you still bring that along? And I think that is something where the the the user, the prompter, the communicator, whoever who is Shel Holtz (19:01) Yep. Hemingway is another one. @nevillehobson (19:25) engaging with the AI is his or her absolute responsibility to set the parameters for the AI in that context, to educate the AI on you. I’ve done that a lot. spent a lot of time on chat GPT. And that was one of my big bug bears, by the way, about chat GPT five, it seemed to have forgotten half of what I told chat GPT four about. So I’ve redone all that with chat GPT five. And I can see that in how it ask me questions, how it prompts me and how responsible I ask it to do stuff like that. So that to me is is one way in which you can be confident yourself that the tone and authenticity of your AI assisted writing is okay. And that really is really what it comes out is not about creating a kind of a corporate manual for everyone has to follow. And I think it’s also to do with the comfort levels you have in your perception of that. piece of writing or reading that someone has written that may have been assisted by AI may not more than often than not, it’s likely to have been assisted by AI. What is wrong with that? Well, a of people find something wrong with that nevertheless. So go back to right. Shel Holtz (20:38) Yep. And again, I think that’s that transitory issue that I think we face. I think in three or four years, no one’s going to be talking about @nevillehobson (20:45) No, I’m sure you’re right, Shell. I mean, I think now we’re seeing things emerging in these academic papers. One of the examples I mentioned about stylometric fingerprints. think we’ve hopefully I think we’ve passed now through the phase of people saying, hey, I’ve got this software tool that could tell instantly if something’s written or not. No one cares about that unless you are being deceitful and seriously trying to game something. You ain’t going to succeed with that even. So things have changed. Things are evolving real fast. And people’s if you like, expectations are evolving too, particularly the younger you are. And according to one of the papers I read, younger audiences are comfortable generally speaking with AI polish, but care deeply about whether a message feels authentic. And that’s what we need to be paying attention to. So help in defining authenticity is one job communicators could take on. We’ve got through the training, yes, we know, here’s how you do this with this LLM. Here’s what you could do with that. Now let’s pay attention to the tone. Are you paying attention to that? So I think the kind of road is shifting in a slightly different direction than otherwise we might expect because of this. And the academic research seems to be backing this up as well. Things are changing fast, it seems to me, and you’ve got to be on the case. Shel Holtz (22:03) Yeah, and by the way, I have sent this first draft of my book to a group of thought leaders in the employee communication space. I asked them for their input. You know, what needs to be fixed? Is it terrible or should I proceed with this? And if you like it, please write a testimonial. ⁓ And so far, not one person has come back to me and said, I could tell you used AI in this. Not one. So, you know, if you do this right, if you use it as a tool and do it right and come up with a workable process, I guarantee you all those people who say, can tell when it was written by AI, they can tell when it was written by AI by somebody who didn’t know what they were doing when they prompted the AI to write something. That’s what they can tell. @nevillehobson (22:32) Maybe we should ask them. Yeah, that’s the watchword, I think. And so, by the way, I see this year, I think there’s been at least six books published about internal communication. So everyone’s on a book bandwagon. I hope yours is gonna be slightly different, because they’re all saying the same thing about strategy, what’s important, how to use AI. Yours will be different, right? Shel Holtz (23:13) Mine does, I think it barely references AI. No, mine is about a framework for how to, if you read those other books and you go, okay, I understand the models and I understand how to develop a strategic plan, but I still don’t know how to apply this on a day-to-day basis. The framework is how you do that. One the very first things I say in the book is you’re not going to learn the models of internal communication in this book. @nevillehobson (23:30) Perfect. Shel Holtz (23:42) Go back and read something fundamental, then come back and read this to figure out what to do with all of those models that you’ve learned about. So yeah, it’s different. @nevillehobson (23:51) Cool. Excellent. Shel Holtz (23:54) So hope people like it. ⁓ If I actually, I don’t know how I’m gonna publish it yet. I don’t know if I’m gonna self publish this or look for a publisher. I’m waiting for the feedback from the thought leaders that I have sent it to who have agreed to read it. ⁓ But it wouldn’t be done. And this is the point. It wouldn’t be done if I didn’t have AI to help. It would still be sitting there as 28 blog posts. So, you know, criticize it all you like. ⁓ It works. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of Four Immediate Release. The post FIR #481: The Em Dash Panic — AI, Writing, and Misguided Assumptions appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss the common practice of providing free proposals and baseline ideas to clients. They argue that professional service providers should charge for these services as doing so adds value and ensures a thorough diagnosis before providing solutions. They share personal experiences and compare the situation to doctors who would never prescribe treatment without proper tests. They emphasize the importance of understanding a client’s business through a paid discovery phase and making adjustments along the way to deliver effective results. Additionally, they discuss the risks of providing overly detailed plans in early stages, the benefits of quarterly assessments, and the importance of maintaining clear communication and trust with clients. [read the transcript] The post ALP 282: Stop providing solutions before understanding your client’s challenges appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

GEO – generative engine optimisation – is suddenly everywhere. Is it the new SEO, a passing fad, or simply good communication practice in disguise? In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson talk with Stephanie Grober, Marketing & PR Director at Horowitz Agency in New York, about why GEO matters, the competing narratives surrounding it, and how communicators should prepare for the impact of generative search. What we discussed What GEO actually is – and how it differs from (or builds on) SEO The hype versus the reality: is GEO a genuine discipline or simply “snake oil”? The importance of authority, credibility, and tier 1 media coverage in shaping generative search results Why trade and niche publications are still crucial for visibility Practical steps for PR and comms professionals to get ahead, from media training to message consistency The evolving role of content marketing, press releases, and multimedia in a GEO-driven environment How law firms and professional services balance credibility with regulatory and compliance requirements Where GEO may be heading over the next 12 months About our Conversation Partner Stephanie Grober is the Marketing & Public Relations Director at Horowitz Agency, an integrated marketing and public relations agency with offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Vancouver (B.C.). Her team works with law firm clients ranging from BigLaw to boutiques, designing and executing content and communications strategies that generate bottom-line growth in measurable ways. Leveraging deep relationships with the press, she delivers high-quality earned media placements for clients and utilizes her extensive marketing background to amplify these results through a multi-channel approach. Stephanie joined Horowitz Agency in 2021 after serving as Marketing and Communications Manager for a Top 50 accounting firm in New York City. Follow Stephanie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniegrober/ Relevant Links https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418 https://www.geekytech.co.uk/what-is-generative-engine-optimisation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1m6k4gx/is_anyone_actually_doing_generative_engine/ https://zapier.com/blog/generative-engine-optimization/ https://a16z.com/geo-over-seo/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/stop-trying-to-make-geo-happen/554629/ Audio Transcript Shel Holtz (00:01.989) Welcome everybody to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz. I’m here with Neville Hobson and our guest today, Stephanie Grober, who is marketing and public relations director at Horowitz Agency. Stephanie, it is terrific to join you today. Stephanie Grober (00:19.33) Thank you guys very much for having me very excited to be here and chat a little bit about what we are calling GEO. Shel Holtz (00:27.471) We are, even though some people are disputing that particular moniker. But before we jump into this, Stephanie, I think our listeners would appreciate knowing something about your background. Stephanie Grober (00:40.748) Absolutely. So at Horowitz Agency, we specialize in working with law firms and select individuals. So very much rooted in legal marketing. I’ve been in professional services marketing for about six years now, and I’ve been a marketer for my entire career across several different industries. So I was fortunate to be able to continue honing my craft, focusing on communications and now communications, marketing, NPR for law firms and leading attorneys. Shel Holtz (01:13.837) And what got you into studying this field of AI and generative engine optimization? Stephanie Grober (01:22.7) Well, it’s a very exciting time for public relations professionals. When you are talking about AI and generative engine optimization, you’re going to hear the words authority and credibility, right? And authority and credibility are core principles of public relations. So that right there should signal, wow, this, this sounds like a PR play. And so as research has come out and we’re learning more about generative engine optimization and essentially the AI overviews that are populated when somebody puts a search term into a search engine, we’re finding that the AI is creating a brief summary using sources from the internet. And what are those sources? Well, a lot of them are authoritative sources from top publications where you may have a PR professional working with you to get you quoted. So it all circles back to PR, makes it a very exciting time for PR professionals. Those who have already engaged the services of PR consultants or may have PR services happening in-house are a little bit ahead of the curve right now because they’re already going to be appearing in the authoritative sources that AI likes. @nevillehobson (02:50.272) Great. That’s a very good overview. We talked about this topic, actually, as you know, Stephanie, in the regular episode of this podcast, where we looked at this thinking about this interview, this conversation we’re going to have with you. And in fact, it made me think today, earlier today, my time in the UK, I was watching a video by Danny Sullivan, who as a name, you’ll know, he was a big deal, Search Engine Land magazine he was a founder of, he works at Google now. But he was giving a presentation at WordCamp in Portland just last week about SEO. And it was actually about SEO and GEO was how he pitched it. I was intrigued because he talked about essentially the same thing. And I thought, well, that’s not my understanding of it, unless I got it wrong. But that’s really what Shel and I talked about the other day. Although to be fair, he did talk about what the, the most effective thing to do isn’t to argue about or worry about acronyms or initialisms or whatever. It’s about, building trust, creating clear, incredible content, putting it where you can, which already are. I thought, God, did he listen to our episode or maybe, but of course that was last week, not, the other day. but he did get me thinking about this. Is GEO an evolution of SEO? Is it? the same thing by another name. We talked about this and that’s not what we figured out what’s what’s your take on that? Stephanie Grober (04:26.786) Well, I loved what Shel said in the episode from earlier this week that there is no magic bullet, right? Necessarily. That is the approach I take to marketing. I, you know, working in very traditional industries, professional services, often B2B, highly regulated spaces. So understanding that, which informs our approach to marketing and may be different than a direct to consumer play, for example, you know, some brands have a much younger demographic audience, B2C needs while we are, you know, working with highly distinguished attorneys, professionals in a very traditional space. But I agree with Shel. There may not be a magic bullet here. And as for the distinction between SEO and GEO, I do see GEO as complimentary to SEO. You could say that it’s an evolution. I wouldn’t say that they are exactly the same thing, but they are very parallel to each other. I think that if you have successfully been employing SEO strategies as a part of your overall marketing efforts, then you are probably ahead of the curve, as far as GEO. And that would be because you’ve been consistently adding optimized content to your website. You know, which keywords you want to appear in search. You may have been structuring your content in smart ways that already are answering questions. And that would be all on your own website, right? But now when we’re talking, GEO, we’re talking about getting that content out to external sources and reinforcing many of the same things. So SEO, could say it’s about keywords. GEO is about credibility, but the LLMs, they still have to learn. So those keywords are gonna be important for them even in your external sources. And overall, what we’re looking for with GEO is mentions and visibility, whether it’s you as an individual or your brand. Shel Holtz (06:34.097) One of those magic bullets that people have jumped on in the last few weeks is some research that found that Reddit is the source of a lot of the content that is turning up in AI results. And Professor Malik just a couple of days ago, Ethan Malik at the Wharton School said essentially, nope, he said what they did was look at how often the sites come up in the answers at least once in the web search function of some AI agents when they do a web search for more information in response to a keyword search. He points out that the company searched for a bunch of keywords using Google AI mode and ChatGPT web search and perplexity, and then said they measured how many times those sites were included in the reply. That doesn’t necessarily mean that if you’re doing research or if you’re just in one of the LLMs doing your job, that Reddit or Quora for that matter will be the dominant source of the information that you get. And yet this chart is everywhere and everybody’s talking about it. I confess, I went to our leadership in the organization I work and I said, we need to be in Reddit. And now… It appears I was just chasing a shiny object or a magic bullet. How do you stay on top of what is working in this generative EO space? Stephanie Grober (08:16.376) So as a marketer, always have to think about which channels make the most sense for your brand or your individual brand, whoever you’re representing. Like I said, we work in legal with law firms. So Reddit is not exactly the space. There are some very famous attorneys who’ve done ask me any things on Reddit, and I’m sure that is helping them. I do believe that user generated content sites are coming up in GEO. AI overviews simply because of how the content is structured in a very human questioning way, but it’s not going to be the right place for everybody. So when we take a look at that at Horowitz agency as PR professionals working with law firms or other other business professionals, there’s some other interesting stats. I think that stood out. So Muckrack put out a great report recently also analyzing which sites are read by AI. And I believe it was almost 30 % of the sources are journalistic outlets with prominence and attention paid to outlets like Reuters, AP, Axios, for example. So those are sort of your tier one media. So that is a strategy you can employ for your credibility. If you don’t think that Reddit is the right place for you, okay, then let’s go after the tier one media Now I will caveat that by saying, niche outlets are also very important to AI. So don’t think that you have to be an AP or Reuters. If you ask a niche question, it is very likely that the AI is going to read a niche or trade press outlet. So those are very valuable as well. But overall journalistic sources are a very valuable way to start appearing in GEO results. That’s where from a PR perspective, we can start maximizing our approach and our strategies, tailoring them there to support GEO. @nevillehobson (10:21.792) You emphasised the importance of securing tier one coverage, all those publications you mentioned, the idea being that being visible in such places can influence how generative engines surface content. But coverage like that takes time, doesn’t it? And it isn’t always immediate. So how do you advise professional services firms to balance the longer term credibility building with the short term pressure to be visible in generative search results? Stephanie Grober (10:51.534) Absolutely. It does not happen overnight. That’s something we tell our clients and probably any PR professional or communications professional in-house is going to share with stakeholders. You know, we don’t wake up, decide to do PR and land a New York Times article the next day So the best approach today is to make sure that as part of your overall marketing plan, PR is included and you have a comprehensive… hopefully you already have that, but if you don’t have that and you’re thinking, I want to make sure that we’re doing GEO right, don’t neglect PR. There’s a few parts of the PR process. First one is just having your sources become media trained and responsive. And again, that takes time to be comfortable speaking to the press, to identify what they want to comment on, to give good sound bites. That all takes some practice. So somebody who’s just starting out in PR might not be comfortable if the Wall Street Journal calls them on day one and they’re like, this is my first rodeo. So you wanna have some practice working with smaller outlets. Again, working with those trade publications which are still going to be very valuable. So we don’t only wanna prioritize tier one, but just having a variety of PR opportunities, seeing what works best, that’s something that takes some time. So if you’re not already doing that as part of your PR strategies, the time to start is now, it’s all going to benefit your GEO. And then another key part of this is making sure the messaging is consistent. And that is down to the way you are cited in the press, for example So, you know, as one example that comes to mind is if you’re somebody who is always referred to in the press as a celebrity criminal defense attorney over and over, that’s going to train the LLMs. When somebody is searching for a celebrity criminal defense attorney, you’re gonna come up in that AI overview because the reporters have referred to you that way in interviews. So how you present yourself to the media and how they cite you is important. It’s important to be consistent. And then of course, you know, what you’re saying in each opportunity matters too, but I think down to the way that you are cited is, very key. @nevillehobson (13:24.213) I’ve got just a quick follow up on that tier one element before we kind of move on from that. But I’m just curious, actually, Stephanie, because you mentioned earlier the names of a couple of the new media, if I can call that, people like Axios. Isn’t the landscape evolving so fast, generally speaking, the media landscape that trying to kind of give labels or pigeonhole a media property as this is tier one and it’s based on those old definitions back from print media days, I suspect. We’ve got, know, Exhaust is one of the new ones, but there are any number of I’ve never heard of you type of outlet by influencers, quote unquote, who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers. And I’m wondering, Shel, I’ve talked quite a bit about nano influences and others who are kind of disrupting the traditional ways in which things are structured. So where does this fit in that case? And probably the example you gave is someone brand new to this to PR just starting out suddenly is immersed in all this. What, how do you deal with this in this changing environment? Stephanie Grober (14:36.91) So the media landscape has changed drastically. Reporters in newsrooms, there’s been mass layoffs. What I think is interesting about GEO is as we’re saying GEO is so important, journalists are struggling. Newsrooms are letting people go. They’re restructuring at the same time. So how does GEO exist without journalism? And I hope that it demonstrates the… need and necessity of great journalism. They can’t exist without each other because otherwise, you know, what has authority, what do we trust, right, to build a response from the AI. So like you said, Nebel, the landscape is changing. There’s new outlets every day. That continues to happen to myself and my team. We’re constantly discovering new outlets. There’s journalists who have left major newsrooms, who have started their own newsletters, they’re on Substack, they’re podcasting. All of this is important, is the good news when we’re talking GEO, because GEO assesses a very wide variety of sources, including video, including podcasts. So I recommend that anyone who is wading into PR take as many opportunities as they’re comfortable with. And again, don’t only hold out for Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Take a variety because you never know what is going to give you the most bang for your buck or where somebody is going to discover you. This is all about discoverability. This is about mentions. And the more you can do it, the better. All of the LLMs have their own way of reviewing sources at this point. They are not consistent. There is not one formula that they’re using, whether it’s chat GPT or Claude or perplexity. Some of them use journalistic sources at a higher rate than others. Some of them use smaller outlets. Some of them have partnerships with major newsrooms like Financial Times to train the AI. So we’re in the very early stages. That’s why, again, I don’t think that there is a one size fits all formula. I don’t think that there is a magic bullet today where it’s do it this way or you’re going to fail. It’s be prepared to be flexible, but be everywhere that you can. So as things shift, you’re still ahead of the curve. And anyone who has been a marketer through the rise of digital marketing, I think is probably familiar with that, and anyone who has been on the internet since the beginning of the internet is probably familiar with that, right? When I grew up, it was the dawn of Wikipedia and things have really changed. We just got Google. I remember the first time a librarian told me about Google. So this is all gonna change. It’s gonna change very rapidly. It could go away. It could be the most important part of marketing I don’t think we know yet. Shel Holtz (17:50.39) How do you measure all of this? The success metrics for traditional SEO are pretty clear and not that difficult, but what should PR people be paying attention to in GEO? I’ve seen things like share of answers, citation rate, sentiment and model responses. What’s genuinely measurable that’s meaningful today? Stephanie Grober (18:16.046) So there are definitely some tools that are purporting to provide AI analytics, GEO analytics, which are available. I think the best way to measure today is simply through your own experimentation. Enter the questions you think your clients are asking in search, read the overviews, do you come up? Are your competitors coming up? And use that as a guide to see where you need to focus your efforts. And again, it might be certain keywords, certain questions that you want to prioritize, but that’s the easiest way just to be the end user and see how you come up, ask, ask the LLMs to describe you, to describe your brand, your company and see what comes back to you. so again, it’s not going to be perfect. We see a lot of errors or mistakes or misassignments of names and things when we do this. So, you know, this is not the be all and end all to being successful. And I will say that, you know, AI search accounts today for, I think less than 30 % of search traffic. So, fortunately it’s not the only driver of traffic and, you know, discoverability, so we have a little time to iron out those kinks. @nevillehobson (19:35.906) That’s really interesting. In episode 479 of this podcast, the one I mentioned earlier that we did, knowing we’re going to talk to you today, we talked about companies spinning up standalone, community driven content brands that become credible in their own right. When does that approach do you think makes sense? And what safeguards keep it authentic, rather than just a thin GEO play? Stephanie Grober (20:03.592) Unique content is incredibly smart. So if that is something that is sustainable for your company and your brand, I think it’s a brilliant idea. Content is king everywhere and in every industry, I think some more than others, but content is really king. So it just needs to be something that is sustainable. If you have users generating content, that’s excellent. in working with attorneys thought leadership is huge. Attorneys are always writing. They’re speaking. can repurpose their content. So there’s always fresh content going up, on websites and things like that. one thing I wanted to mention too, as, as we’re discussing this, whether it’s a brand that builds their own content platform, or a company working with content in another way is that the LLMs prefer recent and fresh content. So, you if you were writing or speaking or quoted in the press five, six, seven years ago, that’s not gonna help you today. It’s time to get back out there. In the past 12 months or so is ideal with ongoing fresh content. So just something to keep in mind because I know, you know, time passes quickly and we’re like, when was I quoted? No, it was like five years ago. Anyway, back to the content. I think that’s a very smart and strategic play if it can be supported. We know that marketers only have so much time in their day. There’s a lot of things that demand attention. So you have to choose to prioritize what makes the most sense and is a sustainable effort for your team. Shel Holtz (21:43.063) In that episode that we recorded this week and in a previous episode, in fact, that we dedicated to this topic, we discussed the argument that press releases need to be reformulated for algorithms. I’m skeptical of that. How do you adapt or should you adapt everyday PR assets, whether it’s press releases, content that goes on your company’s website newsroom? Thought leadership pieces from your executives on LinkedIn or wherever? How do you adapt those so they’re more likely to be used and cited by LLMs but still useful for the human readers they were originally designed for? Stephanie Grober (22:32.75) Absolutely. And when I listen to that art that that episode rather, you know, one thing that crosses my mind is, is, you know, part of me wants to say the press release is dead. Can we say that? I’m not sure. It feels like it might be dead, but there is also a school of thought that GEO is reviving the press release. Now, if you put out press release across the wire, meaning in most cases you’re paying to put it out across the wire, that might be something that hits an LLM and is used to train on a certain topic. So in some ways, a press release still can have influence in that way. Other than that, the typical press release is not going far these days. It’s very difficult to maximize a press release. We are competing for attention in the media landscape. There are less journalists. There is more news. The news cycle is shortened. It’s not even 24 hours. It’s about 24 minutes, it feels like most times. So just your standard press release, not put across the wire, not going far for most companies, you know, unless you are a enterprise corporation or, you know, very exciting in some other way. @nevillehobson (23:58.229) Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting. Is the press release dead? It’s a topic that pops up frequently. I think Shel and I have talked about this, the press release is dead, at least six times in the last six years. It could be more. Shel Holtz (24:12.945) By the way, I do like to remind people that for compliance purposes in the U.S., they still have some value, regulatory compliance. Stephanie Grober (24:20.301) Yes. @nevillehobson (24:20.936) Yeah, I’m sure that’s the same here in the UK too, although it may not be specifically a press release, a device you need to have as a compliance record. But I mean, it’s a thorny question because I see people commenting on this here and there on social networks particularly now and again that, yes, this is dead and B, no, it’s not. But this notion of repurposing press releases to take into account the audience change, i.e. it’s not people, it’s the algorithm. I’m not using the word machine. I see people talk about it’s the machines. It’s not the machines. It’s the algorithm, right? So I think that is a credible view. I disagree with you there, Shel. I think that is something that we are seeing that you need to prepare your content to publish it online with two audiences in mind, which are the humans and the algorithms. And the example Shel mentioned that we discussed specifically in an episode was somebody who has thought this through, it’s a really good visual explainers on the differences between them. They made a lot of sense to me, I have to say. But is it going to be like the press release, the social media press release from 2006 to 2010, that was a template of the things you should include for social media to take advantage of it generated quite a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz, lot of hype and ultimately just kind of faded away. It didn’t really, you know, attract a lot of attention. Is this likely to be the same case? I wonder. So I think this does this is important this change along with all the other things that we’ve been discussing. And I just wonder where this is going to fit if people are going to be creating press releases where the prime audience they’re thinking of is an algorithm. Where does that fit into the picture? Stephanie Grober (26:19.436) Well, there’s the algorithm, there’s the machines, but ultimately humans are still engaging with the content, right? So if the AI is gonna feed it back to us, it has to appeal to the human audience. So I think that there’s only so many differences between them. I personally have not seen a huge variation in the style of a great press release myself. And I think most communications professionals… I hope that most of them have a great sense of what it takes to have a really effective press release. I would say again, in the industries that I’ve worked in, that’s not changed very much regardless of whatever flashy marketing terms and strategies are in use at the time. But as far as getting it to hit, The LLMs, the algorithm, it has to address the human at the end user who has a question and is seeking information and it has to answer that question. Shel Holtz (27:23.025) Yeah, that’s interesting because one of the very first arguments that I heard about what you need to do for your brand or your content to show up in the LLM results is to get away from saying what and get more into saying how. More explanations, more details. This leads me to believe that content marketing is probably a strong contributor to what LLMs get trained on. I’m thinking of the great content marketing that comes out of Microsoft where they’ll have a lengthy feature, but it contains some short videos. It contains some short audio clips. It has infographics and photos and text. And it’s all there in that format so that whoever wants to use it can just grab that audio file and maybe use it in a radio broadcast or just grab that video clip and use it in a TV news report. Does that make sense? Should we be focused more on content marketing and less on more traditional forms of communication? Stephanie Grober (28:34.432) I think so. And I think how we are content marketing is important. The variety, the structuring of your content, exploring some Q and A type pieces is a great idea. And hopefully folks are already doing this because of SEO, right? It shouldn’t be such a surprise where your headings and the structuring of your content pieces were important. We see that in, in journalistic content too, right? There’s, there’s headings because news outlets want their articles to come up in search rankings as well. So this shouldn’t be groundbreaking to anybody, but think about variety in your content. Think about making sure it’s answering questions, play with the format, use various types of multimedia to support your content. I think that is absolutely a sound approach today. @nevillehobson (29:35.04) So I’ve got a question about, you mentioned it actually, AI overviews earlier on in this conversation. Quite a simple question, really. Less and less people are clicking through. They’re gonna get their search results using Google and they’ll have then a summary on the right-hand side of the screen. And that gives them all they need and they do not proceed any further. What impact is that having, do you think, and will continue to have on search generally and how you measure search, whether it’s GEO or SEO, how big of a concern should that be that people are not clicking through? And by the way, I’ve seen some reports in the last few days, which I haven’t bookmarked, frankly, but they’re talking about, you know, this is not what’s happening. People are clicking through. That doesn’t seem to fit what I see. I don’t know, respectable search results being produced or data being produced showing that that is not the case. What’s your thought on that, Stephanie? Stephanie Grober (30:36.482) I think it’s so early still that we don’t know yet, right? Because AI, no, GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, the generative search results still make up a very low percentage of the overall engagement with our search engines. What I did see some reports of is that the click-throughs may not be to a brand’s homepage anymore but some of their internal blog pages or specific content pages. So I think it’s smart to make sure that those are optimized. And again, it comes back to the content marketing that we were just talking about. Folks land somewhere else now in your website environment. I think it varies very much brand to brand, company to company, depends on what type of answer the end user was seeking. And then again, we have to think, is everybody trusting AI? Personally today, I don’t fully trust the answers AI is giving me. I’m always going to go back and research them. Now that might change individual to individual, generation to generation, but it’s not perfect yet. So, you know, I don’t think we’re at a place where somebody is just going to solely get their questions answered by AI and go about their day. Maybe we will get there and we will see a real sea change in the way web traffic works, but I don’t think this is going to completely break the system. And I don’t think it’s going to end search traffic as we know it. and you know, if folks are answering a question where they need something, they’re still going to have to click through to get it. AI can’t procure something for you. perhaps it can answer a question, but most likely you’re going to want to click through to read further and do your own research if the AI is just producing relevant sources for you. Shel Holtz (32:38.473) Your agency, Horowitz Agency, has to deal with an additional wrinkle with all of this, given the nature of the market sectors that you serve. Law firms, financial services, accuracy and compliance really aren’t negotiable in those industries. So how do you balance making content citable for AI, while staying inside the lines on confidentiality, disclaimers and regulatory restrictions? Stephanie Grober (33:08.174) I think what I love about legal marketing is that it is so professional and it tends to err more towards the traditional side of things and value just great marketing. So law firms don’t always go for flash in the pan. Law firms weren’t racing to be on TikTok, although there’s some lawyers who are very successful, but the new hot thing isn’t always what a law firm or a professional services firm is looking to do. Rather, they embrace the fundamentals of great marketing and then make sure that everything that is put out adheres, complies, represents the brand consistently and correctly. There’s a lot of layers of approval. Anyone working in corporate marketing is probably very accustomed to that. And I think that that’s a great thing. We are not trying to utilize any gimmicks. We are not trying to trick the AI because we have to stand behind what is put out on behalf of our clients. And when you’re talking about professional services, that’s really guidance and counsel to folks with very important personal or business questions. Shel Holtz (34:24.593) And let me ask you a quick follow-up question on that, as long as we’re talking about law firms and financial services. Those are pretty close to the top of the list of professions at risk from AI. Have you seen any movement among your clients in that direction? Are they starting to replace maybe paralegals or customer support people with AI? Stephanie Grober (34:49.132) Law firms are embracing AI, much like every industry, industry agnostic, think companies are embracing AI. They’re spending a lot of money on ways to incorporate AI into their processes. But I think it’s too early to say if any humans have been replaced. So what I get this sense from some major law firms is that they at the very lowest levels are taking away some of the hours of intensive research that might need to be done. But then they are prioritizing the value giving advice that their professionals can provide. So it might not take as many billable hours on research, but you might get more value in the conversation with your attorney or advisor. Of course, marketers are using AI in very interesting ways. But again, it’s not perfect. So I think it’s still very early stages. Certainly it’s not replacing anyone in these industries yet today. And we’ll see if we get to a point where it will. Now, the same can be said for communications professionals. Is AI going to take our jobs? I personally think if AI is writing all the content, then… wouldn’t we reach a point where human written content is actually at a premium and bespoke and in demand? Because how can you stand out in a sea of AI written content, right? That doesn’t sound appealing at all. I mean, that’s not what I wanna read. hopefully we’ll still be here in five years. Shel Holtz (36:36.049) Yeah, I just saw yesterday that Mark Benioff at Salesforce announced that they are letting 4,000 customer support people go and replacing them with AI. I was thinking on the financial services side that might be a similar trend at some point. Stephanie Grober (36:54.516) Mm-hmm. Perhaps, but I think it’s very risky in, you know, legal services, accounting, when you’re talking about that. you know, these industries are waiting in very carefully. @nevillehobson (37:11.518) We could do a whole episode just on this topic. So sticking with GEO looking ahead as I tend to do, there’s the horizon. Where do you see GEO going and evolving over the next year or so? And traditionally that question might be over the next five years. No, the next year or so. Do you think it will mature in that timeframe or will it need longer, becoming maybe a reliable discipline like SEO eventually did? Or is it more likely to, I guess, remain a contentious topic? People not agreeing on what it’s for, but there’s good practices that we’ll see emerging amongst all the hype. How do you see it, Stephanie? Stephanie Grober (37:58.167) It’s very hard for me to predict. At this point, there’s not an easy way for all of us to opt out of AI search results with every search engine. If that were to become an option, would folks just simply turn it off? And would we not even need to have this conversation if it simply falls from sort of the consciousness? Or is it going to be continued to be sort of forced upon us as search engine users? Of course there was the Google antitrust case decision this week where, know, they’re keeping chrome and Gemini is going to be, feeding us its results. So I don’t see that going anywhere in the next year. I will be watching to see if AI search gets smarter and gets more accurate. and how our clients or those I work with appear in the search. So it will be sort of testing for us. Of course, we’ll be looking out for more case studies of it leading to work. Anecdotally, there are folks in legal who are saying, yes, I’ve gotten clients from chat GPT searches, which is great. I personally know that there are some attorneys I’ve worked with in corporate law, for example, who after a great streak of appearing in outlets like Wall Street Journal, CFO.com, know, AI will tell me about them if I say who is a great &A attorney in Los Angeles. That’s what I want to see. That’s what I’ll be looking for in the next year. I can’t say that definitively we’re going to see a sweeping change more than that. Shel Holtz (39:44.634) In the episode that we recorded earlier this week, I mentioned that I had read an article about, I think it was a LinkedIn article from somebody who said he had tripled the volume of output in order to have more content out there that could be hoovered up by the models in the hopes that the volume would lead to more visibility in results. I’m not sure that’s the answer, but certainly budgets aren’t keeping up with volume. The point was made that this individual did not get more budget to help create all that content. So if your firm were hired by a communications leader and asked you to adjust their content strategy for GEO, what process changes would you recommend, say, over the first 90 days? Stephanie Grober (40:42.35) Absolutely great question. One thing I wanted to mention too, when we’re talking about important content right now is rankings, reviews. So whether it’s professional rankings for an individual or best of lists, I would make sure that a client is incorporating those into their strategy. Because what better way to train an LLM than by appearing on a best of list from the last six to eight months, right? That’s exactly what you want to come up for most likely in a search. We do probably over 500 nominations for our clients each year. So that is always a part of our strategy, but very important. I’d be looking at online reviews, whether for a company, could be your Google My Business reviews. It could be Yelp, Facebook, wherever you might get reviewed, in whatever way you might get reviewed. And then making sure that the client is out there, mentioned and visible again. Each month, fresh mentions in journalistic outlets, whether they are prestige media or trade press, they still have value. Multimedia, getting them on video, getting them in podcasts anywhere we can. And then from a content strategy as a marketer, hopefully at this point you are repurposing, but use AI and let it help you repurpose. There’s so many tips and tricks that marketers can use when it comes to AI. And that includes taking what you already have and making it new, repurposing it into different formats to make your job a little bit easier. So that today is one of the biggest benefits of having AI available to us as a tool to make content production easier. @nevillehobson (42:30.014) You make a good case for that, Stephanie. That’s exactly what I say to people. If you don’t use it or you’re skeptical, this is one thing you could do, you’ll benefit from doing this. That’s been great, this conversation. I think we’ve reached a point now for that famous question, Shel mentioned at the very beginning, which is, what didn’t we ask you that you really wish we had? Stephanie Grober (42:53.998) You know, I think a great question would be what is going to be the greatest impact that AI has on PR, public relations, and communication? I think those industries are still inherently human. I think they are relationship driven. I don’t think that we’re ever going to take humans out of the equation. So even as we are working to boost GEO results, doing public relations, getting media mentions, we’re working with people. You have a PR professional, you have a client source, you have a journalist who’s a person, and that is still very valuable. AI can’t do that for us, it’s relationship driven. So make sure people are doing your PR, not AI. @nevillehobson (43:43.818) To kind of add add to that topic, Shel and I have talked about a few times on the podcast during this year. And it’s in the kind of area of AI agents, but it’s looking at I think, Shel’s phrase for it is ‘synthetic employees,’ where you have you have a situation that isn’t too far fetched in the near future, whether that means two years, five or 10, I don’t know where think about your team and your organization, where you’ve got maybe 15 people in that team of which three perhaps might be AIs effectively. So this isn’t like, you know, some of the illustrations you see on posts where you’ve got people and there’s like a robot in there. It’s not like that. I don’t know what it’ll be like. It might be like that actually But is that kind of like a serious disruptive element suddenly appearing on the horizon that will have a huge impact on this amongst many, many, but think specifically what we’re discussing today and the change it might bring to that where you’re introducing AI team members in a team. What do you think about that? Stephanie Grober (45:00.706) I think that there are tasks AI can do well, but when it comes down to communications, strategic thinking, most of us don’t like it. We don’t love fully AI generated content, right? Where nobody’s reviewed it. We’re not thrilled. Journalists most often don’t want to get pitches that were written by AI, outlets don’t want to receive articles that were written by AI So, you we pitch byline articles for clients all the time. A lot of newsrooms now have a, you know, a disclaimer that we may reject your piece if we think it’s written by AI. So it remains to be seen, you know, there are AI helpers, they’re on our teams right now, you know, how many companies are incorporating AI, we do have AI teammates. We’re figuring out the best use for them. Some are better than others. Some are more trusting of AI than others. And some folks are more clever to use it as a tool than others. when it comes to communicating back and forth with artificial intelligence completely, the more strategic and in depth you get, just don’t know if that’s what we’re going to see in the very near future. Shel Holtz (46:29.649) Yeah, I have an AI colleague now. I have a two-person communication team where I work myself and one colleague and no budget for consulting. And so what I did was it took about four or five hours because I really worked on this, but I created a custom GPT who’s the senior communications consultant with a specialization in my industry. it doesn’t do stuff for me, but it’s a sounding board. If I develop a strategy and I want somebody to play devil’s advocate, I can’t go to my $400 an hour consultant, I don’t have a budget for that. So I’ll just ask the AI consultant. I realize that it’s not as good, but in the absence of any alternatives, it’s fine. And it has come up with some really good responses. So… Stephanie Grober (47:18.7) Yeah, and I dare say that you’re probably, you know, far ahead of some others. So learning how to use it, learning how to maximize its output, how to get the most out of it and have consistent results, I think is where we should all strive to be today. And then in the meantime, you know, follow many voices on AI, on GEO. It’s changing, it’s evolving so rapidly that, you know, don’t put all your eggs into one basket. Don’t buy into a one size fits all approach today. It’s still too soon. And don’t abandon your other marketing strategies or tactics in favor of some of the AI driven ones. Shel Holtz (48:03.843) Yeah, as we pointed out in that episode from earlier this week, recommendations from people you know are still top of the heap. Stephanie, this has been great. We really appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today. How can our listeners find you and maybe read some of what you share online? Stephanie Grober (48:23.146) LinkedIn is great. Stephanie Grober. I’m with Horowitz Agency. Love LinkedIn, I’m constantly talking to my clients about spending more time on LinkedIn. So I’d love to connect with anybody there. Our website is HorowitzAgency.com. And I look forward to keeping the conversation going. Thank you guys very much for the time today. The post FIR Interview: Generative Engine Optimisation with Stephanie Grober appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss how agency owners should handle employees with physical and mental health concerns. They cover the increased openness around mental health and self-care, sharing personal experiences and business challenges. They highlight the importance of individualized management approaches, legal considerations, and quick professional advice. The hosts also emphasize compassionate handling of employee health issues, the need for flexible scheduling, and the impact on small businesses. Gini shares insights on providing support for team members and owners, such as disability insurance, to cover long-term absences. They conclude by underlining the importance of empathetic leadership and offering flexibility. [read the transcript] The post ALP 281: Supporting team members with mental and physical health challenges appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

In this reflective follow-up to our FIR Interview in July with Monsignor Paul Tighe of the Vatican, Neville and guest co-host Silvia Cambié revisit some of the key themes that resonated deeply from that conversation. With a particular focus on the wisdom of the heart – a phrase coined by the Vatican to contrast with the logic of machines – Neville and Silvia explore the ethical responsibilities communicators face in the age of artificial intelligence. The discussion ranges from the dignity of work and the overlooked realities of outsourced labour, to the limitations of technical expertise when values and human well-being are at stake. Silvia expands on her Strategic article focusing on precarious workers, while Neville revisits ideas shared on his blog about the Church’s unique role in advocating for inclusive, human-centred dialogue around AI. Above all, this episode highlights how communicators are uniquely positioned to help organisations navigate the moral and societal questions AI presents – and why they must bring emotional intelligence, narrative skill, and ethical awareness to the forefront of this global conversation. Topics Covered The idea of wisdom of the heart vs logic of the machine Redefining human intelligence in the AI era The Vatican’s call for a global, inclusive debate Dignity of work and the reality of outsourced labour What ethical AI really means – beyond compliance Why communicators must be part of the AI conversation Links from this episode: FIR Interview: Monsignor Paul Tighe on AI, Ethics, and the Role of Humanity ANTIQUA ET NOVA: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence Speaking for Humanity: The Wisdom of the Heart in the Age of AI A View from The Vatican: AI, Ethics and the “Dignity of Work” We must build AI for people; not to be a person What Does It Mean to Stay Human in the Age of AI? The Rise of Culturally Grounded AI The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 29. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on [Neville’s blog](https://www.nevillehobson.io/) and [Shel’s blog](https://holtz.com/blog/). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Transcript (from video, edited for clarity): @nevillehobson (00:03) Hello everyone and welcome to episode 480 of For Immediate Release. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK. Shel’s away on holiday, but I’m delighted to be joined by Silvia Cambié as guest co-host for this episode. Welcome Silvia. Silvia Cambie (00:17) Thank you Neville, delighted to be here today. @nevillehobson (00:21) Excellent. Glad you said that. So in this short form episode, we’re going to spend time on an interview we did in late July that you, Shel and I did for an FIR interviews episode. We interviewed Monsignor Paul Tighe from the Vatican. He played a central role in shaping the church’s thinking on artificial intelligence and its broader societal impact. He was instrumental in the development of Antiqua et Nova, the Vatican’s note on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence published in January 2025. In our interview, Monsignor Tighe offered a powerful reflection on how AI challenges us not only technically, but also morally and spiritually. He urged us to consider what makes us human in an age of machines, calling for a global conversation grounded in dignity. agency and what the Vatican calls the wisdom of the heart. So in this episode, Silvia and I want to share what resonated most for us from that conversation and why we believe communicators have a vital role to play in shaping this future. I mentioned this before during the interview, Silvia, that you were instrumental in securing that interview. So tell our listeners, how did it come about? Silvia Cambie (01:38) Yes, indeed Neville. So you and I were talking in the spring when Pope Leo XIV was elected and we were talking about his background in math and science. And so on top of that, the Vatican has been contributing their views to a lot of papers like Antiqua et Nova to the Minerva Dialogue, which is a forum that basically collects views about the human the interaction between humans and AI and the dignity of work. So we were thinking of bringing these voices to the forefront and in particular in relation to your listeners, your listeners and Shel’s listeners who work in comms and work in change management and are often confronted with the moral aspects, values. the ethical part of governance. And at the moment, they’re looking for a North Star because we are at the forefront as communicators of this wave of AI introductions, AI pilots. But we, at the same time, we often lack guidance. So that’s why we wanted to collect these views from the Vatican, from Monsignor Tighe. relate them to our work, make them very concrete and kind of actionable, something for our listeners to use, to be able to use. And so I think you were mentioning before what resonated with us, with you and me. And so we had our conversation with Paul Tighe back at the end of July. And then we @nevillehobson (03:10) Get it. Silvia Cambie (03:25) also listened to a lot of the podcasting podcast interviews he’s done. And we’ve read, you know, articles he’s written and so on. And I think something that resonated ⁓ a lot with me is really the the fact that he believes that technology is never neutral. It’s always the product of a mentality of a culture. And technology is often. @nevillehobson (03:36) Hmm. Silvia Cambie (03:52) created, produced, programmed by people who, you know, focus on profit, focus on ⁓ productivity. And at the moment, there is a sort of a new trend because of AI that people have to adapt to the demands and pace of machines. A lot of people have to have deadlines these days set by algorithms. And that is creating a certain dynamic which I have witnessed many times when I work in managed services, which is you’re basically following the rhythm of a machine and you have no time to think, you have no time to develop new ideas, to stop and ponder and get insight out of what you’re doing, out of what your client needs. So at the end of the day, everybody loses. ⁓ You don’t have fresh ideas. The client doesn’t get a fresh view or, you know, fresh recommendations on how to do things. So it’s all very mechanistic and it’s a real risk out there that people, you know, will have to follow the rhythm of machines in the work. And therefore what Paul Tighe mentioned. which is the wisdom of the heart, as you mentioned before, the ability to relate to other people, how you relate to your client and solve their problems. So I think I’ve seen that in my work and I think that is a real risk. And we have to be aware of that. And as communicators and change managers, there’s a lot we can do because we are on the front lines. And yeah, so I think this point about technology, that technology is never neutral and that ⁓ there’s this risk and danger that we will have to follow the pace of machines and lose the wisdom of the heart and lose the ability to draw insight from what we do. That’s something that really resonated with me. @nevillehobson (06:01) Yeah, I understand that. It’s similar. I was also thinking that one element that did nudge us together to do this was what we had observed, what we’d read and seen even in the prior months during spring and summer. In fact, really since Pope Leo was elected to the papacy and understanding his background in science and mathematics. But also what struck me that I noticed was his knowledge, his ability, as it were, to understand the role of social media in communicating with people. And we noticed that the Vatican was pretty proactive on many social channels. And indeed, Paul Tighe was at one point ⁓ in the Dicastery of Communication, kind of like the Communications Department, in charge of all of this. So they have a track record, a history, if you will, of knowing how to use social channels to engage with wide audiences, not just the faithful of the church, but broadly a wider audience. And that’s something we observed. And then this document, Antiqua et Nova, I found it an extraordinary document of what it set forth, what it described. and the focus in particular on that phrase, wisdom of the heart, that resonated very strongly with me. I found it interesting too that the conversations that the Vatican had been having, notably with Paul Tighe, but not only ⁓ Monsignor Tighe, others too, with leaders of Silicon Valley companies, of the big tech firms in Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta We’ve had, you know, we’ve seen more Google, Microsoft, others gathering in a number of instances over the past year or so, ever since Pope Francis’s time to talk about this, where the Vatican was able to introduce this theme, this broader theme of the wisdom of the heart. And it struck me too, that Paul Tighe was quite clear and mentioned the Vatican is not claiming expertise in AI systems or algorithm design, which by the way, struck me too. We keep talking about the machines. It’s not machines, it’s algorithms we should be worried about. Instead, it offers something that the tech industry and many governments sorely lack. I agree with this completely, a deep concern for long-term consequences you nudged on that point, Silvia, just now, and the consistent voice on the value of human dignity, agency and solidarity. So the wisdom of the heart, Silvia Cambie (08:09) Thank @nevillehobson (08:29) is a phrase that appears in Antiqua et Nova as part of its final reflections. And it says this: “We must not lose sight of the wisdom of the heart, which reminds us that each person is a unique being of infinite value, and that the future must be shaped with and for people.” And that’s a pretty straightforward message. It’s simple. Perhaps it could be even simpler, actually, but I’ve seen others alluding to this idea of this is about people, not just the tech recently. So for instance, subsequent to the interview, and this was actually quite recently, about a week or so back, Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, wrote in an essay that we must build AI for people, not to be a person. In other words, AI is not a person. We hear a lot about, and I’ve had conversations with people about this, these so-called personas, the way in which you can create something that’s a duplicate of you almost. It’s like a version of you as a person. I think that’s crazy to do that, to be frank, because that reinforces everything that we don’t want reinforcing, if you will. But Suleyman makes the case that the real risk we face is not AI suddenly waking up with consciousness, as some people talk about, but people being convinced that it has, because it’s not sentient. That’s a firm belief that I have. These are electronic devices and tools, not actual versions of people. We’re not there yet. That’s quite a way away, I would say, if ever. But Suleyman goes on to say, this is the interesting bit to me, I want to create AI that makes us more human, that deepens our trust and understanding of one another and strengthens our connections to the real world. We won’t always get it right. But this humanist frame provides us with a clear North Star to keep working towards. I mean, that couldn’t be simpler either, could it? And this is the head. of a division of one of the biggest technology companies on the planet, Microsoft, saying that. And I’ve seen others in the industry saying similar things recently. So maybe this is beginning to get attention. And I can’t say, of course, that it’s a direct result only what the Vatican has been talking about, but that surely must be having an influence. So I summarized all this just for me. Quite simply, emotional, moral and ethical intelligence must guide communicators response to AI. The big question is how, Silvia Cambie (10:50) Yes, indeed. And I also liked very much the article by Mustafa Suleyman because I think it’s, as you said, he pointed out the real danger, not that the machines are going to wake up and, you know, kind of take over the world and pretend they’re conscious. It’s more that they are that people. @nevillehobson (11:06) Take over the world. Silvia Cambie (11:14) will get used to interacting with them and will expect really kind of seek that human aspect in the machines and will also kind of seek approval from AI, from algorithms. That’s also something that Suleyman is cautioning us against. also, so that can create psychosis, stress, anxiety, people being disenfranchised at work. And I think that there is a quote by UNESCO that I really like, and I have used it in the article I wrote for Strategic, the online platform for communicators. It says that ⁓ AI is about anthropological disruption, right? It’s not only how the… @nevillehobson (11:48) Hmm. Silvia Cambie (12:04) machines, the algorithms function, it’s how humans react to it. And to answer your question about what communicators can do, because indeed we are at the forefronts, we talk to people, we hear about their needs, about their anxieties and worries at work. So I think there are lot of attempts at the moment to ⁓ wrap some governance around AI, AI applications, rollouts. And what I’ve seen is, know, centers of excellence being created in companies. Those centers of excellence oversee AI pilots, for instance, the progress. So, and have, you know, the usual suspects sitting on them, which are, you know, people from IT, developers. But I think it’s very important that communicators and change managers become part of those fora because communicators know how to talk to people. Again, they’ve been doing that for forever. That’s their bread and butter. Also, they can relate to previous tech rollouts, you know, like a workplace technology and how people had reacted to that. So there is all that. institutional knowledge that is needed now because this shift is so unprecedented. So I kind of cringe every time people show me a COE and AI COE made up only of IT people and developers because that’s not the way to go about it. I really like a start, statue mentioned a fact you mentioned you and Shel mentioned in a previous FIR episode that I think you were quoting ⁓ studies by MIT and HR dive which says that people are expected to use AI in their daily work but they are not receiving proper training so they are kind of very confused about you know what you know, this is going to hit my performance indicators. What am I supposed to do? They’re not training me. How am I going to use Co-Pilot? I’m going to download Chat GPT and do my own thing and show that I’m doing something and that hopefully will be enough for my company. So all that needs to be structured. And again, communicators have the knowledge. They have the institutional memory. They have the means and also they know where the different voices sit in a company. Like when we do research before rolling out AI, we create workshops, we’re representatives from different parts of the company. So in that case, communicators know how to spot those voices because we have worked on on rollout projects before. @nevillehobson (15:03) Hmm. Silvia Cambie (15:07) how people react, where pockets of resistance might be found in the enterprise. So I think that it is paramount that we allow communicators and change managers to participate in those bodies that are being created for AI governance. And obviously that’s also a way to kind of channel what you were saying Neville, you know, the human aspect, what makes us human. It’s the ability to relate to other people. is insight, it is emotional intelligence. And it’s all things that are really needed these days because of this shift. And it’s kind of, you know, a paradox that we are so focused on the technology now, but at the same time, we would need to focus even more on the human aspect because this challenge is so huge that people are just not prepared for it. And we really need to focus on the human aspect, their abilities, what makes us human in order to enable people to deal with it, right? In order to enable the training, in order to make people feel that they are equipped @nevillehobson (16:24) Thank Silvia Cambie (16:26) sufficiently equipped for it. So I also would like to, there is a quote by Pope Francis that I really like, late Pope Francis. He said, this is not an era of change. This is a change of an era. And I firmly believe in that, you know, everything we’ve been saying Neville in, also in our interview with Paul Tighe leads to that. But I think that in order, so because this change is so huge, we really have to empower people in an unprecedented way and communicators are very well positioned for that. @nevillehobson (17:06) Absolutely agree with that. I think you mentioned training indeed, Shel and I discussed that topic in that recent episode of FIR where people feel they’re not getting training on the one hand and on the other hand, there are companies that just aren’t provided because they don’t think it’s worthwhile. There are others though that are doing it quite well. So it’s very, very patchy. It’s not universal. But I think The role of the communicator then is to develop and deliver that but there’s also another aspect which to me is the it touches directly on on what we’re currently discussing, i.e. the human or the humanity element, if you will, that, you know, organizations are looking at adopting AI to improve their efficiency to ⁓ improve their productivity and they will enter scale more without looking at this aspect? Are they asking the human questions? And that’s the role, in my opinion, of the communicator well placed to do that. So three questions I wrote down that could be where communicators are able to introduce this element in their conversation. Does this technology help deepen trust and empathy? Or does it risk eroding them? That’s a valid question, in my view. Are we building systems that reintroduce conscience, care and context into conversations, or are we defaulting only to efficiency and output? And the third one, are we ensuring that AI strengthens our connection to each other rather than replacing those with illusions? And I think there are undoubtedly at least a dozen more, but to me, those are great ones to start with that, in a sense, force attention on this rather than just those technically valid, yet ⁓ stale approaches to all of this. It dehumanizes, if you like. And I think the, just briefly going back to Mustafa Suleyman’s North Star, as he references quite clearly, and the Vatican’s wisdom of the heart, there’s an essential reminder in all of that, to me, which is quite simple to grasp. To stay human in the age of AI is to place empathy, dignity and care at the heart of design and use, not simply efficiency or the ways algorithms shape our actions. Suleyman directly references that in his essay. And he’s the first technology leader I’ve seen publicly doing that the way he did. It was very clear and is a long essay, by the way, very long, worth reading. So that’s encouraging to see that and it’s worth. Silvia Cambie (19:07) Hmm. Mm-hmm. @nevillehobson (19:30) I think communicators looking for a kind of a something to hang a hook on. This is it in my view for communicators to do that. that, and I think quite clearly is how to address the question we’ve been asking ourselves. How can communicators help democratize the conversation side of organizations? This is one way to go about it, I think. Silvia Cambie (19:51) Yeah, indeed. You know, conscience, care and context. Those are very important aspects when you are rolling out rolling out AI and dealing with people’s reactions. And I think those questions you asked are very powerful and they are a good start for communicators to kind of make people think, right? This isn’t just about the tech. This isn’t just about the efficiencies this app is going to create. You’re still dealing with people. Your employees are people, your clients are people, your regulators are people. So you’re still dealing with them. And I think that it’s about empowering people to ask the right questions, right? So I was referencing before to those COEs that are being created to monitor AI pilots in companies. Well, the conversations there tend to be very technical and always focused on the tech, know, the rollout, the different waves of the rollout. And I think, again, communicators can bring back the human aspect. How are people reacting to this? Is this making them more happier in their work or is this making them more insecure? As you were saying before, lot of companies are not providing training or not providing the right training. So that makes them insecure. Are they getting more and more confused in the way they are ⁓ dealing with their clients and customers? Because if you have AI that takes over part of that relationship, what is left for them to do? So there is, it’s a very complex scenario that has to be considered from different aspects. And again, you you mentioned the Suleyman’s North Star and the Wisdom of the Heart ⁓ mentioned by Monsignor Tighe. I think these are kind of, sort of, these, thoughts can inspire communicators, can inspire people who work in AI governance and make them pause and think that it’s important to focus on these aspects, to focus on what Suleyman was saying, the fact that people might expect AI ⁓ to be, might think that AI is conscious and they might. establish, you know, develop a relationship of a certain kind with it so that they end up depending from the algorithm, depending from, you know, expecting approval. And so I think that now is the time to stop and think and introduce those thoughts into the conversations that are going on in companies about AI. And I think @nevillehobson (22:33) Hmm. Silvia Cambie (22:51) It’s kind of, we’ve got to be brave. We have to do it. I know that often, as I was saying before, know, technology and technical aspects are basically overriding other aspects just because of the pace of ⁓ the project, just because of the pressures that people are under. But I think it’s very important to introduce these thoughts. into the conversation. And again, you know, it’s a moving target, right? We will continue to look for voices like Monsignor Tighe, like Mustafa Suleyman I’m sure as we progress, there will be others and there will be other aspects. But I think that it’s just this… @nevillehobson (23:17) Mm. Silvia Cambie (23:37) human aspect and the interaction between ⁓ humans and AI seen from the point of view of humans that is important. And we have collected a voice from the faith community. ⁓ We have looked at the paper that Suleyman published, which is really very thought provoking. so, and we will be looking for our voices going forward. @nevillehobson (23:52) Mm-hmm. Silvia Cambie (24:04) But I think for communicators, it’s very important to continue to be open to these voices, right? It’s also a way for us to get backup and support when we need to shift the conversation in a company towards the user, towards the rights of the user, towards the dignity of the user and not just about the technologies. then, you know, these are all tools that we can use to make our point and to make our point ⁓ stick. So I think, as I said, this is a lot of, know, the target, this is a moving target. We’ll have to do a lot more work on this, but it is fascinating for communicators because You know, I get off often, I get asked by people in comms. So, you know, how do I shift to tech and I am not a developer and I don’t have the right knowledge in AI and I don’t know how to build an LLM. I, my answer is, is basically this, right? Make sure, bring the human voice into the conversation. do you know how to talk to the base? you know how to collect their voices, or you know how to collect their views, make sure that they are heard, because it is important as we go forward. So I think that is what communicators can do. And that is a very important role indeed at the moment. @nevillehobson (25:37) Yeah, I agree with you. Now, that’s very good, Silvia. And I think just to add one final thing to this, in a sense of parallel development that is very much a part of all of this is what I’m calling the end of AI universalism, where currently we’ve got ⁓ an environment, if you will, and an assumption, let’s say that that one or two global platforms will serve the world. And we’re talking about the tech tools, the chatbots, the means by which people connect with others and discover things themselves. And it’s Silicon Valley based and tends to be in English more than the other language. But we’re seeing some interesting things happening. Latin America. Peru is leading the charge on building a Spanish language chatbot that serves communities throughout Latin America, taking into account cultural nuances, language differences, and the values that are unique to those communities in that part of the world that are very much not global North style environments, if you like. We’ve got what the Vatican is doing that we’ve just been discussing from that interview with Monsignor Tighe calling for an AI shaped by human dignity. And then just literally yesterday, this this this a few days ago this past week. Saudi Arabia is asserting its cultural sovereignty, let’s put it that way in digital form, with the launch of an Arabic language chat bot called HUMAIN Chat. And it’s based on a large language model that’s Arabic, the largest in the Arabic speaking world, the developer says. And that’s intended to be targeted at people of the Islamic faith globally, that’s two billion or so, Arabic speakers throughout the world, 400 million or so of them. At the moment, it’s just in Saudi Arabia. I’ve seen quite a bit of buzz building up about this over the past week, mostly focused on the tech, because it is quite new. The point I’m making though, is that with HUMAIN Chat and the others, These are signs that the future of AI will not be written in only one language or framed by just one set of values. And that’s something I think we should all be paying very close attention to. And it enables, I think, some, it broadens out, if you will, the part of bringing the human element into the conversation, where you’ve got tools that can be a great help in that goal, in bringing that human part into it. So These I find very interesting, Silvia, the are we looking at fragmentation of, of AI universalism could be enrichment, I see it. So that’s part of the picture, too. So the human element is essential to all of this. And these are all parts of the jigsaw that’s that’s rapidly being being completed, if you will. Silvia Cambie (28:21) Indeed. @nevillehobson (28:32) Are we seeing the potential risk of creating parallel AI worlds where cultural and political divides are reinforced, not bridged? That’s a risk in my view. But the humans can prevent that happening, I would say, assuming everyone’s on the same page. And as people were talking about, that is not the case, right? So it’s an interesting time. I think it’s a fascinating time to be a communicator with all this going on. Because as you pointed out, Silvia, earlier, there are communicators who are fearful of this, who don’t know what to do about this because not getting trained. I would say that this is easy to say this and maybe not easy to actually do for some people. But grasp the nettle, as it were, as the saying goes, get to know these technology tools and how you can, in a sense, leverage them to take your humanist message to others in your organization, particularly the leadership, to bring that human voice into the conversation about deploying AI. Silvia Cambie (29:11) Yeah. @nevillehobson (29:27) and helping people understand what’s really, really, really important is to bring that human voice into it. It’s not just about efficiency, ⁓ you know, and all that stuff and speed of doing it all. It’s also about what people believe what’s in it for people, what’s the value to individuals in understanding and accepting their role and their values in something like this that’s happening. So it gives us all food for thought, right? Silvia Cambie (29:35) profitability. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. I really, I was really very happy to see those developments. And you shared with me an article a few days back that the UN, ⁓ something coming out of the UN, UN was saying that, you know, AI is too Western centric, it’s too focused on the global north and the global south is, you know, bound to suffer from that. @nevillehobson (30:14) Mmm. Silvia Cambie (30:18) Well, you and I have lived in different countries, lived in, you know, have worked in different countries and we know how important culture and diversity of points of view is. And that I think it’s very healthy to have new approaches to AI that are going to challenge the main narrative, i.e. the Silicon Valley narrative. Also, because sometimes, you know, the messages we get out of Silicon Valley are kind of the big brother, we have the, you know, we are reaching a, a GI, no, we’re not reaching it. Well, we’ve reached it. I don’t know. So it’s kind of, you know, very strange and, and very sort of big brother. I’m going to tell you when I, when I think it’s right, but you know, at the moment I’m not telling you the truth. So I think those, points of focus of those alternative approaches. You mentioned Latin America, you mentioned the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I think it’s very interesting because in that way there will be kind of competition, quote unquote, to Silicon Valley. There will also be more transparency, but also there will be an awareness of the fact. that as Monsignor Tighe said, technology is never neutral. Technology reflects the mentality of those who create and develop it. So we want diversity of cultures, diversity of points of view. We have to make sure that we collect different voices. and we channel those into the development and the creation of AI and AI applications. So I think this is a very exciting development, particularly the one from Saudi Arabia. I worked a while ago with Saudi. developers and communicators on social media and social media campaigns. And they’re very, very creative and they were the forefront of social media. So I am expecting something really interesting and sophisticated from Saudi Arabia. so, yeah, so this is a very good development all in all. And also it’s a good development for communicators, right? Because communicators, a lot of our colleagues are involved in cross-cultural communication. They work for multinationals, they have to spot those voices and bring them to the forefront. So this will be inspirational for them, right? They will be able to tell their bosses, their board, look, it’s not just this AI application that comes out of Silicon Valley that you can use. There is an AI application in Peru. @nevillehobson (32:44) Yes, absolutely. Silvia Cambie (33:08) that has a lot of users and is very efficient and effective. And why not using that for our operations in Latin America? So that gives us tools and ammunition to challenge the narrative. @nevillehobson (33:26) Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s very true. This has been a great conversation, Silvia. And I think the wrap up, as it were, the extension from the interview, just sharing these additional thoughts, hopefully our listeners will find that complimentary to having listened to the interview. And listeners, have, haven’t you, right? Haven’t you? You have listened to it. If not, ⁓ yeah, yeah, if you haven’t, there’ll be a link to the episode show notes in the show notes for this episode. Silvia Cambie (33:44) Yeah, I have, I have, absolutely. @nevillehobson (33:54) And indeed, much of what we discussed in this episode, there’ll be links to some of those topics in the show notes as well. So let me conclude by saying Silvia, it’s been a pleasure having you as guest co-host on this episode. So thank you very much for joining in. Silvia Cambie (34:08) Thank you for having me, Neville. @nevillehobson (34:12) So this episode is, like I said, the link to the interview with Monsignor Paul Tighe will be in the show notes. If you have any comments you’d like to share about what Silvia and I have talked about, then please do. You could do that through the usual channels that we mentioned. But particularly, you could send us a voicemail. There’s a way to do that on the FIR website. You can send us email fircomments at gmail.com. Increasingly, we’re noticing we’re getting comments quite significantly on LinkedIn. People aren’t actually sending us directly comments anymore. That seems to have fallen out of favor. But conversations build on LinkedIn. FIR doesn’t have its own page on LinkedIn. So you’ll find those comments typically on posts from Shel or I under our own names. But increasingly, others are posting about what they heard in FIR. So you’ll find lots there. On other social channels, we have a community page on Facebook. And we’re also we have a handle for FIR on Bluesky. And then there’s our individual ones too. So thanks, everyone, for listening. And if Shel were here, he’d wrap this up by saying, that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #480: Reflections on AI, Ethics, and the Role of Communicators appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.