Guest Article: A Robot Wrote My Press Release

© Vivian Hood, Co-owner, Jaffe

Reprinted with permission of the author. May not be recirculated, republished or otherwise used without both the prior permission of the publisher and full credit to the author, including a live link to the post. Thank you for respecting our rights to and ownership of our work.

The advent and growth of social media created a huge leap in technology for public relations, but since then, few other new tech entries have made much impression beyond tweaking algorithms, adding features and providing updates.

Until now.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is trending on news sites and social media for being hyped as potentially making all kinds of content generation faster, easier and cheaper for everyone, including professional services firms. I decided to see how it works and what could make sense for use within the legal industry.

Putting Content Generators to the Test

My exploration focused on what application AI content generators might have in PR … Two available content generators that I checked out are Jasper and ChatGPT.

Jasper requires a monthly subscription after a free trial, and offers several plans depending on expected word number usage, type of content, type of user and other features. Jasper states it delivers original and optimized content at 10x the speed, presumably of normal human creativity. The platform offers many templates based on the needed content, and it offers to work with more than 29 languages. Jasper’s AI recently wrote its own press release to announce a new chat interface on its platform, providing one representation of its claims of robust abilities.

“Some have breathlessly proclaimed ChatGPT to be the most important technological development since the invention of the printing press or the splitting of the atom,” noted Joe McKendrick in a Forbes article about the ownership of content generated by AI. I simply had to try it out for myself!

I registered for ChatGPT, which became available in November 2022 to initially use as a free platform during its research preview, and entered this request: “Explain what an AI content generator does for writing articles.” Within seconds, the following response appeared:

“An AI content generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically generate written content. It can be used to produce articles, news stories, social media posts, or any other type of written material.

“The AI content generator works by analyzing a set of input materials, such as a list of keywords or a sample article, and then using this information to generate new content that is similar in style and content to the input. The generated content is not necessarily a copy of the input, but rather a new piece of writing that is based on the input and uses similar language and ideas.

“AI content generators can be useful for a variety of tasks, such as generating filler content for websites, creating social media posts, or producing articles for marketing and promotional purposes. They can save time and effort for writers and content creators, and can help to produce a large volume of written material quickly and efficiently. However, the quality of the generated content may vary, and it may not always be suitable for all uses.”

Not bad. For me to formulate that response, I would have had to research and cull information from a variety of sites and write it up. That takes time, so witnessing the speed of this reply in seconds in real time was remarkable.

I next asked ChatGPT to write a press release to announce a new partner named Al C. Yuencourt who joined the Jacksonville, Florida, office of the national law firm Wee Winnit Allwaze, and who practices general litigation. The resulting draft of the press release surprised me with the content provided; it contained nearly all the elements I would have included had I written it. I finetuned the request to add other elements about this new partner’s background, and the revised results acceptably incorporated those new points.

I had to chuckle at the quote prepared on behalf of John Doe, the managing partner of Wee Winnit Allwaze, since it was very generic. I visualized this AI generator whizzing around its data stash, reviewing every press release with a law firm managing partner quote welcoming a new partner, and collating the most common phrases to draft the quote — all in under 3 seconds! Editing for additional messaging, voice and tone would not be too difficult at this point.

First Reactions

My initial thoughts about using AI-generated content:

• Key messages requiring advance strategic thinking must be incorporated into the request or added during editing, but AI learns with feedback to develop more refined responses.
• Time is needed to learn full functionality, which can offset the speed of content being generated once the request is entered. Once that is learned, the process should be much faster.
• AI could generate a typical and basic press release with speed.
• A solo practitioner, or a small law firm without the resources for a PR consultant or communications employee, could reasonably turn to an AI tool to prepare a straightforward press release.
• Editing is always necessary.
• I found it useful for sparking prompts and ideas.
• Word choice in my example press release was rather simple and repetitive in some spots, and there was loss of context and depth, along with a lack of nuanced details that would come from someone who understands the industry and audience.
• Personality was missing — but I read that AI could learn voice and tone style, so improvements could be made. For example, I could have provided personality traits about the managing partner that would be reflected in the word choice of the draft welcome quote.

New Thoughts

Overall, I predict PR and marketing professionals will start to incorporate AI into daily work, and it will become as ubiquitous as asking Siri now for reminders and data requests.

It’s almost inconceivable to imagine a world now without Siri or Alexa, even if their results can exasperate and frustrate almost as much as they can delight and inform. How does ChatGBT fit in? Think of Siri for Q&A, giving you immediate facts at your voice command, one and done. Now imagine that you can continue the conversation over time, albeit only in written format —that is ChatGPT. Unlike Siri or Alexa, it remembers earlier conversations and learns and adjusts for continuing back-and-forth responses. I’m simplifying matters, but ChatGBT is designed for engagement in a written format.

Ways to Use AI
[AI could be used to] to help develop questions to ask in a new-business meeting, job interview or networking event … Furthermore, sharing the experience about using AI for your conversation would be an interesting icebreaker!

Another obvious content need … is social media, and AI could easily help write social media messages. Reviewing and editing would still be necessary.

Humanity vs. Humanoid

In another Forbes article about the future use of AI, author and professor Ajay Agrawal offers a valuable reminder. “Despite advances in computing power, AI remains a tool about prediction, not judgment. Judgment is what humans must still do with the predictions that computing serves up.”

In other words, the humanity behind our writing — the nuances and factors and history and personality and all the rest of what makes a writer — cannot be entirely replaced by AI when we share our stories.

While AI content generation seems promising, it is still very early in the game and requires strategic human thinking and eloquence for direction, instruction and — of course — editing. It’s always exciting to witness industry shifts and growth from the use of technology, but I’m not worried about human writers losing their jobs anytime soon. (Indeed, I never thought I’d have to clarify and spell out “human writers,” but here we are!)

What other uses, benefits and drawbacks do you see with the use of AI-generated content? Would you use it, and if so, how? If not, why not? …

Jaffe provides a wide range of public and media relations services, including websites and graphics, for the legal industry. For the whole article, especially the context of AI for law firms, go to: https://www.jaffepr.com/blog/robot-wrote-my-press-release?utm_source=Newsstand_011123&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsstand_011123&utm_term=Vivian_Blog.

What is Editing?

Have you ever wondered what editing really is? Or about what course of study is best for preparing for an editing career?

The practical answer to the latter is that it doesn’t matter what you study because education is valuable and broadening; experience matters more. But when backed to the wall, my answer, unlike that of many of my colleagues, is that the best courses of study are philosophy and law.

The reason is because of what editing is. Editing is the art of language compromise, not the art of strict structure application. I suppose a little context would be helpful.

The matter arose in a discussion on LinkedIn in which I suggested philosophy as the best course of study and another member suggested linguistics. Linguistics is a wonderful field and certainly of great interest to editors, but it is a structural field. True, it wonders about word origins as well as how words are used, but its focus is the structure and lineage of language.

Philosophy and law, on the other hand, focus not on structure but on how to think. Both are “argumentative” fields — Does a god exist? If I don’t see you, do you really exist? What is my place in society? — What role should/does X play in social affairs? — that require thinking about all sides of a question. The difference, I think, between the philosophy-trained thinker and the linguistics-trained thinker is the difference between the average chess player and the chess champion. We all can learn to play chess and even to play it well; few of us, however, can master the advance thinking techniques required to be a grandmaster.

(Before I stray too far afield, let me reiterate that all education is good and all education can prepare a person for the intellectual challenges of editing. What we are discussing is the hierarchy.)

Much of editing is structure-oriented, such as grammar and spelling, and coding manuscript. Structure is mechanical and can be self-taught or picked up in a couple of courses on, for example, grammar. I grant that it is the rare person who develops that same depth and breadth of knowledge about the structural issues via self-learning or a couple of entry-level courses as would be obtained from the rigors of a university major in linguistics, but how much is really needed for editing, especially as editing is the art of language compromise, not the art of strict structure application.

Over my 30 years as an editor, what I have most realized about some of my editor colleagues is that they are very capable of applying the “rules” of language. Where they are weak, and what I think often distinguishes the good, competent editor from the great editor, is that they are unable to “think” about what they are editing. They are unable to grasp a broader picture by, for example, putting themselves in the shoes of a variety of readers or by analyzing a text from multiple angles. To use another metaphor, most editors are like professional baseball players in that they are the better, more professional, more able players from the pool of would-be professional players, but are not the superstars who are an even more finite group. Baseball fans recall Willie Mays, for example, but how many of his teammates on the 1954 World Series team do we remember?

It is this “thinking” ability that I believe philosophy and law teach but that linguistics and other study disciplines do not. Linguistics will teach us how to ascertain the origins of all the variations of “god,” but not to think about what “god” means in the context of the manuscript and as being conveyed to the variety of hoped-for readers of the published manuscript. Linguistics doesn’t really teach the art of communication as much as it teaches the science of communication, but editing is (or should be, I think) more concerned with the art than the science.

I am not suggesting that the science of editing is unimportant. Knowing what punctuation to use where and when is very important in making sure that the author’s meaning is correctly understood (using Lynne Truss’s famous example, is it “eats shoots and leaves” or “eats, shoots, and leaves”?). Knowing whether the right word is being used to convey the intended meaning is equally important, as is choosing among the homophones (does the author mean to, too, or two?). And good editors do these tasks well and correctly. For the most part, I suspect, this is the job for which most editors are hired. And this is the job for which most education prepares us.

Yet there can be more to editing than just those tasks. And, for many of us, when we suggest rewriting a sentence or a paragraph or reordering paragraphs or chapters, we are embarking on that additional path. As we gain experience, we begin to think differently about language and its use. I know that the editing I did 30 years ago is not as good as the editing I do today; those intervening years have taught me many things and exposed me to many new ways of looking at language. The more I read and learn, the better editor I become.

But even 30 years ago I had the advantage of having been trained to think analytically. That is the legacy of a philosophy and law education: It is not what to think, but how to think. What I think about is of little importance to philosophy; the methodology of thinking about it is important.

Editing is a combination of structure and philosophy; it is not one without the other. The more accomplished one is as an editor, the more skilled one is at both prongs. Most of us begin our editing careers strong in one prong but not the other, and we build strength in both prongs as we gain experience. But if asked what is the best course of study for a wannabe editor, my answer is philosophy or law because it is learning how to think that is hardest to master.

Once we have mastered how to think about language, we learn that editing is more the art of language compromise and less the science of applying rules.

Louis Brandeis: A Life

I am currently reading the biography of one of our greatest U.S. Supreme Court justices and lawyers, Louis Brandeis. Melvin Urofsky’s Louis Brandeis: A Life is available in both print and ebook form. This is the biography to read if you want to discover what a lawyer should be.

Brandeis didn’t grow up poor, so this isn’t a rags-to-riches story like the story of current justice Clarence Thomas. But it is the story of a man of principle, a lawyer who was often the lawyer of the situation rather than of the person. It is also the story of a man whose introduction to law occurred as how to learn law was on the cusp of changing, and of a man who introduced a different form of advocacy — a form that lawyers today do not practice, that is, being lawyer to the situation — which if they did, would enhance our society greatly.

Brandeis was a man of great intellect with a burning desire to understand both sides fully, something that we cannot always claim for our current justices. It was not that Brandeis didn’t have blind spots, but that he had a sense of society and a person’s role in it. For example, he was opposed to monopolies not because they were monopolies but because they were big, which he believed lead to inefficiency and thus societal harm. Brandeis combined great intellect, a devotion to detail, and a sense of social good in his law practice and when sitting as a justice. Brandeis wanted and needed to understand relationships in depth, not just the surface understanding that is so common today.

If you read but two biographies in your lifetime, this should be one of them (the other should be Abraham Lincoln: A Life by Michael Burlingame). Brandeis lived in a time of dynamic change, the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, and was a great contributor to the life subsequent generations enjoyed. His efforts and his approach to law practice made him unique among Americans, especially at a time of economic upheavel. Urofsky’s well-written biography makes Brandeis approachable by readers; no knowledge of law required.