Top 5 tips for comms pros to use AI responsibly – and brilliantly
There’s no question that AI is rapidly becoming a game-changer in the communications field. From drafting content to analysing data, AI tools can boost our productivity and creativity. But as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. AI must be used in a way that is effective, ethical, and aligned with our professional values.
Our recent IABC Queensland webinars highlighted how we can get the most out of AI while staying true to our role as ethical communicators. Here are five tips shared by our expert presenters to help you harness AI responsibly and get ahead. Thanks again to Diana Ioppolo, Adrian Cropley and Bonnie Caver for helping educate our members.
1. Train your AI like a new team member
Like any newbie, AI needs plenty of context. Provide your AI tools with your brand’s foundations and guidelines upfront. That means sharing your value propositions, key messages, audience pain points, and especially your desired tone of voice. The more context you give, the better and more on-brand the output will be, helping avoid generic, bland results.
Think of it this way: treat the AI as an eager junior assistant who needs clear background information and examples to do a good job. Investing time in training your AI will pay off in higher-quality content that sounds like your organisation or client and not a robot.
2. Prompt with purpose and clarity
Get specific and structured with your instructions. Don’t just ask for a press release. Prompt your AI with clear roles, tasks, and details for what you need. For example, tell it, “Act as an expert copywriter and draft a 200-word announcement for X in a friendly, professional tone”. By giving explicit instructions (e.g. the format, audience, key points to include), you guide the AI to produce more useful results.
One handy trick from the webinars is to use a structured prompt format: define what you want and explain any important context or constraints. This might look like: “You are an assistant helping with social media. Write three upbeat tweets announcing our event, using a playful tone.” Being deliberate with your prompts will save you time on edits and ensure the output hits the mark.
3. Review, edit, and add the human touch
AI can draft the basics, but your expert eye is irreplaceable. Always review and refine what AI writes. Fact-check every piece of information it produces, because AI is known to “hallucinate” inaccuracies or bias if not guided. Make sure the tone and wording fit your audience – adjust anything that sounds off or too artificial.
A great tip is to have AI help you polish its own output. Ask the AI, “On a scale of 1-10, how engaging is this content, and how can it be improved?”. If it says “7/10,” challenge it to make the text a 9/10 and incorporate its suggestions. This kind of iterative refinement can elevate the quality of the content. However, remember your skills and don’t rely on the AI alone. Use your judgment to inject real-life examples, stories or a bit of personality that an algorithm wouldn’t know.
In short, let AI do the heavy lifting on the first draft, but edit with a human touch to ensure accuracy, warmth, and clarity. This human oversight not only maintains quality and trust, it keeps the communication authentic (remember, AI is a predictive tool, not a human writer).
4. Uphold ethics and transparency (and join the Pledge!)
Using AI responsibly means using it ethically. The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management has established seven guiding principles for ethical AI – covering everything from putting ethics first and maintaining human oversight, to ensuring transparency and advocating for the common good.
In practice, this means we should be accountable for the AI-generated content we publish and be open about when and how we use AI in our work. Don’t hide the fact that you used an AI tool to draft a blog post or analyse data. Being transparent can help build trust with your stakeholders. Some teams add a small note like, “This report was created with the assistance of AI”. With this in mind, now is the perfect time to let you know the IABC Queensland team collaborated with Microsoft CoPilot to collate our key webinar insights and draft this article.
Another key concept is just because you can do something with AI, it doesn’t mean you should. Always consider your organisation’s values and the public interest before deploying AI-generated communications. If something feels misleading or biased, don’t use it. By following accepted best practices – like the Global Alliance’s guidelines – you ensure AI augments your integrity rather than undermines it.
As communication professionals we have an important role to play when it comes to AI use. IABC Queensland is a proud supporter of the Global Alliance’s Venice Pledge initiative, a public commitment to integrate responsible AI principles into daily practice. Signing the pledge is a powerful way to show that you and your organisation are dedicated to human-centred, ethical AI. It’s free and open to all communication professionals. By signing, you join a global community of peers who are championing transparency, fairness, and human oversight in our profession.
5. Embrace your evolving role and opportunities
There is plenty of narrative about how AI will replace communicators, but there is a flip side. Using AI in communications allows us to redefine our roles for greater impact. If AI can handle a lot of the routine grunt work – drafting boilerplate text, crunching survey results, formatting reports – we get back time to focus on higher-value strategic work.
This gives you the chance to elevate yourself from content creator to strategic adviser. For instance, you can spend more time on big-picture strategy, creative storytelling, relationship-building, and being the ethical compass for your organisation’s tech use.
Communication professionals have a unique skill set and an important perspective to bring to the table. We are naturally skilled in areas that AI can’t replicate well – empathy, nuanced judgment, and leadership in tricky human situations. Those skills are going to be even more prized as automation increases. In fact, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 indicates that Australian organisations consider skills such as leadership and social influence; creative thinking; and resilience, flexibility and agility to be increasing in importance. Lean into these uniquely human strengths and use AI as your assistant whilst you guide the narrative, interpreting the emotions of audiences, and making ethical decisions.
Importantly, as communicators we also have an opportunity to step up as AI educators and guardians within our organisations. Research from the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence shows that only 8.2% of organisations have PR and communications teams taking an active role in AI governance and strategy. This opens up an opportunity for you to carve out a role by helping develop AI policies, training colleagues on best practices, and making sure the technology is implemented in line with company values and stakeholder expectations.
And if leaders or clients push to use AI in questionable ways, it’s on us to be the voice of reason – to explain the reputational risks and advocate for a more thoughtful approach. This advocacy will not only protect your audiences and company reputation, but it will also position you as an indispensable strategic partner in the organisation.
So, what now?
AI is changing what it means to be a communicator. By following these five tips you can confidently integrate AI into your day-to-day, allowing you to automate the tedious tasks, and amplify the most human aspects of our work. Embrace this evolution and own your role as the protector of reputation, especially now that brand trust is a “bigger currency than ever” in business.
Stay curious and keep learning. Build your data and AI literacy but also double down on honing your creative and strategic skills. In doing so, you’ll set yourself up for the future and help shape a communication profession that uses technology for good.
Remember, if you’re passionate about using AI responsibly, join the movement by signing the Venice Pledge and stay connected with the IABC Queensland community for ongoing learning and support. We’re all figuring out this new landscape together, and IABC’s events and resources can help you stay ahead of the curve. By being part of the conversation, you’ll build a network and gain insights to keep innovating in your role.
