About the paper
The report presents original research on how public relations, communications and corporate affairs professionals think about and use AI and communication technology.
It is based on an online survey conducted via Microsoft Forms between July and September 2024, with 161 professionals surveyed across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America.
The data is global in scope, although the respondent mix is weighted towards Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
Length: 68 pages
More information / download:
https://purposefulrelations.com/global-commtech-report-2024/
Core Insights
1. What is the central argument of the report about AI and communication technology in public relations?
The report’s core argument is that the PR and communications profession recognises AI as a major issue, but is still responding too cautiously, too narrowly and too operationally. The authors argue that the sector understands AI mainly as a tool for efficiency rather than as a strategic force that will reshape professional practice, organisational decision-making and the wider social licence around AI use.
That argument appears early and runs throughout the report. The introduction says the industry sees AI as the “greatest challenge” but is not doing enough to address it. The executive summary repeats that pattern: AI is named as the top challenge, investment priority and training priority, yet actual preparedness remains weak. The report therefore frames the issue not as a lack of awareness, but as a gap between awareness and meaningful action.
A second part of the argument is that communications teams are at risk of repeating earlier mistakes made around digital change. The report explicitly warns that, just as the profession lagged on search and social media, it could also lag on AI unless it moves faster on policy, literacy, leadership and governance. It presents AI not just as another toolset, but as a development with effects comparable to an industrial revolution. That is a deliberately strong claim, and it is used to justify the urgency of the report’s recommendations.
Finally, the report argues that PR should not leave AI to technologists, lawyers or IT. Instead, it should play a central role in governance, ethics, stakeholder trust and organisational legitimacy. In other words, the profession’s real opportunity is not only to use AI more efficiently, but to shape how organisations adopt AI responsibly and credibly.
2. What do the findings reveal about how PR professionals currently understand and use AI?
The report shows that AI is now widely recognised as relevant, but that understanding of its value remains limited and uneven. Nearly half of respondents say AI skills are essential for communications professionals, and a broader majority rate them as important or essential. That suggests the profession no longer sees AI as marginal. However, the report repeatedly argues that respondents still associate AI mainly with simple, tactical uses rather than deeper strategic possibilities.
This becomes clear in the perceived benefits. Respondents most often cite saving time and improving productivity, while far fewer point to improving quality, boosting creativity, or enabling more advanced strategic work. The dominant mental model is therefore efficiency-led: AI helps people do existing tasks faster. The report sees that as too narrow, because it underplays AI’s role in insight, planning, forecasting, governance and relationship management.
The same pattern appears in how respondents think AI will affect practice areas. Many expect the biggest impact in consumer marketing communications, while far fewer expect major effects in crisis communications or public affairs. The authors interpret this as a misunderstanding of AI’s broader implications. In their view, the profession is over-associating AI with content production and underestimating how much it could reshape higher-stakes advisory and strategic work.
Actual use also reflects this early-stage maturity. Respondents report using AI most often for alternative content versions, content creation, brainstorming, monitoring, summaries and related tasks. But some areas reportedly “didn’t work well”, especially media outreach and research, which the report suggests may say as much about weak prompting, poor training or wrong tool choice as about AI’s actual limitations. The report also notes use of both personal and work AI tools, with ChatGPT the most prominent. One especially striking finding is that 66% say they have used personal AI tools for work. The authors treat this as a warning sign because it suggests shadow usage, weak governance and possible privacy or compliance risks.
So the overall picture is not one of rejection. It is one of partial adoption: interest is real, experimentation is happening, but the profession still tends to use AI as an assistant for tasks rather than as a source of strategic advantage.
3. What are the main organisational gaps and barriers preventing better use of AI and communication technology?
The report identifies two headline weaknesses around AI: policy and training. Sixty per cent of respondents say they do not have an AI policy, and only 43% say they have received AI training. The authors present those figures as the most urgent warning signs in the report. In their view, this means many teams are experimenting with AI without clear rules, formal literacy or strong organisational support.
Training itself also seems incomplete. Among those who have received it, most training is focused on practical use rather than ethics, safety or security. The report sees that as misaligned with the risk landscape, because respondents also identify legal, copyright, privacy and security concerns as the biggest AI challenges. In other words, the profession is worried about risk but is not training people proportionately on risk.
A related weakness is the lack of formal AI governance. Only about a third report that their team has an AI working group. The report suggests that this may mean either such groups do not exist or that communications is not represented in them. Either way, the implication is that PR is not consistently at the table where AI policy and practice are being shaped.
On the wider technology side, the biggest barriers are integration and capability. Three quarters cite difficulty integrating different systems, and two thirds cite the team’s ability to use technology effectively. Resistance to change also matters, but the report treats training and system complexity as the more structural obstacles. It argues that many organisations already pay for tools they do not fully use, which makes underuse and lack of upskilling a recurring theme.
There is also a leadership gap. Most respondents say there is no technology leader in their team. Where such leadership does exist, it often sits outside communications. The report sees that as a serious weakness because technology choices, adoption and governance are then shaped elsewhere, even though they increasingly affect communications performance directly.
Overall, the report’s diagnosis is that the main barriers are not merely technical. They are organisational: insufficient governance, weak literacy, fragmented systems, underused tools and a lack of ownership inside the communications function.
4. How does the report assess the broader state of communication technology adoption beyond AI?
Beyond AI, the report paints a fairly critical picture of the communications profession’s technology habits. Its broader claim is that many teams still rely on outdated, inefficient tools and workflows, especially spreadsheets and email, even when more suitable specialist tools exist.
This is most visible in relationship and task management. More than half of respondents say they use spreadsheets to manage relationships with contacts, and 43% say spreadsheets are their main way of managing projects and tasks. The report treats this as evidence that communications teams have not modernised core operational systems. It argues that these habits make teams less efficient, less collaborative and less capable of using data well.
The report also highlights inconsistent use of collaboration tools. Microsoft Teams appears to be the most common collaboration platform, but email remains heavily relied upon, which the report regards as a sign of outdated workflow culture. Likewise, even where organisations already subscribe to tools included in broader software suites, such as Microsoft Planner, adoption remains low. The authors interpret this as wasted investment: teams are paying for capabilities they neither configure nor train people to use properly.
At the same time, respondents do understand that communications technology matters. Media monitoring, media databases, content creation tools, collaboration systems and project management tools are all rated as important. So the issue is not that professionals deny the value of technology. The issue is that their actual tool choices and usage patterns often lag behind that stated recognition.
The report is especially pointed about agencies and consultancies. It says they continue to rate themselves as more competent than in-house teams at using and adopting technology, yet the wider evidence in the report suggests in-house teams are often ahead on training, policy and actual maturity. That creates an interesting contrast between self-perception and practice.
In short, the report sees broader comms-tech adoption as underdeveloped. The profession may be surrounded by tools, but it still often lacks the processes, discipline and leadership needed to turn those tools into real operational advantage.
5. What conclusions and practical implications does the report draw for the future of the profession?
The report’s conclusion is that doing nothing is no longer a viable option. It argues that AI and communication technology are not temporary trends but structural shifts that will affect every part of the profession. That leads to a clear practical message: communications teams must move from passive awareness and scattered experimentation to deliberate capability-building.
The immediate priorities are concrete. The report calls for organisations to develop AI policies, expand AI training, establish working groups, improve technology leadership and make better use of existing systems. It also recommends moving away from spreadsheet-led processes, improving collaboration and focusing technology investment on real pain points in workflows and decision-making.
But the implications go further than operational tidying-up. The report argues that senior leaders must engage personally with AI, not delegate it downward. It explicitly rejects the idea that AI is mainly for junior staff or content creators. Instead, the report suggests that AI can enhance senior advisory work in areas such as corporate affairs, crisis communications and stakeholder influence. That widens the significance of the findings: the future of the profession is not only about efficiency gains, but about whether experienced communicators can use AI to improve strategic judgement and organisational value.
There is also a normative conclusion. The profession, the report says, has a responsibility to help organisations secure the social licence to use AI. That means PR should contribute not just to messaging, but to ethical use, governance, transparency and public trust. This is arguably the report’s most ambitious claim: that AI could elevate the profession if communications leaders step into a broader role around legitimacy and responsible adoption.
So the final implication is twofold. On one level, the profession needs better tools, training and processes. On another, it needs a bigger sense of its own role. The report sees AI as both a capability challenge and a professional identity test. Teams that treat it only as automation will fall behind; teams that treat it as a strategic, ethical and organisational issue may strengthen their relevance.