The trends, fears, and future of AI in comms w/ Gab Ferree

In 2023, a third of PR professionals said they had plans to explore using AI in their day-to-day according to MuckRack’s State of AI in PR report. Flash forward three years, and over three quarters of the industry is already using AI across their work.

But are comms pros using AI the right way? We connected with Gab Ferree, founder of comms coaching collective Off The Record, to unpack where AI tools should fit into the day-to-day tasks and how we can automate the no-value (but necessary) work.

Here’s what Gab had to say about the state of AI in communications, how it’s shaping work today, and how it will underpin the industry over the next several years.

Some quotes have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Where AI is – and shouldn’t – be used today

After surveying 170 professionals in September 2025, Gab saw that the majority of comms leaders are using AI for strategic thinking—pressure testing narratives, planning campaigns, and more. In many ways, it’s an approach that aims to stress test the power of these new tools, while also helping executives tackle some of their most important work.

But that’s not where the technology today thrives. Instead, Gab believes we need to flip the script and stop “outsourcing the good stuff.”

“My AI advocacy for comms people is this: these models have gotten so good that the tools to build our own systems are now in our hands,” Gab said. “What was once only possible with an engineer is now possible with only an idea. We all have the obligation to assess our time and to build strong systems that automate the work we do that provides no value, but is a necessary requirement of our job.”

The best way to identify where AI can make the biggest impact today is to audit your work. Gab recommends comparing each task you complete on a matrix of “time spent” and “value provided.”

The items that require significant time, but provide little business or client value (such as follow-up tasks or meeting notes) are perfect to be AI-owned and operated. Deliverables in the middle of the matrix (like repurposing content for a byline or writing a first draft of a media alert based on several examples) could be AI-assisted work, and may just require additional inputs or edits.

What remains is the work that offers the most value, and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. That, Gab believes, is the “good stuff” where comms pros invest the most brain power—and it just so happens to be the type of work that AI still struggles to complete.

“As communicators, we need to take two approaches now. One is getting attention from human beings, and the other is getting attention from the robots. And both will be critical audiences.”

Where AI is driving innovation in comms and its limitations

The rise of AI in comms workplaces is inseparable from the rise of AI in media. As AI search and generative engine optimization (GEO) come into focus for more teams, Gab believes that comms pros are required to speak to more audiences than ever.

“As communicators, we need to take two approaches now,” she said. “One is getting attention from human beings, and the other is getting attention from the robots. And both will be critical audiences.”

That may look like AI prompts that see what industry media outlets are being sourced to answer inquiries, or studying up on tactics to help newswire releases be more indexable by AI agents. But it’s also learning AI-native skillets, like strong prompting and fact-checking for AI hallucinations.

Internally, AI’s ability to strengthen workflows is driving the biggest difference in the industry today. A Gartner report last month predicted 75% of employees will rely on conversational AI for internal communications by 2028. Gab uses AI tools and automations across her business—from repurposing original content into alternative formats, onboarding new community members, and more.

Here, she’s already done “all of the hard work” in creating the original content and defining its distribution strategy, but leverages the technology on robot tasks that expand her reach and buy her more time to focus on sharp editing.

“I have a saying that goes ‘diamonds in, diamonds out,’” Gab said. “You’ve heard of ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ but I believe that if you give an AI the best examples of your content, then you’re going to get great stuff out.”

Despite the opportunities this technology unlocks, Gab says the key limitation to AI in comms today is trust. For her, unnecessary AI hallucinations are the primary barrier to taking AI integration to the next level.

There’s also a constant fear of falling behind. The rapid advancement in the space creates a perception that even those that are AI innovators—like Gab, who teaches thousands of professionals how to use AI in their day-to-day lives—constantly feel like they’re behind the curve amidst a flurry of new platforms and models being released seemingly every week.

“The self-improving models will take this feeling into the stratosphere, beyond where it is already,” she said. “So one of AI’s limitations will be fear from people that they’re so very behind.”

The best way to get over that fear? “Just start using AI.”

Communic-AI-tions: Why AI and comms will become inseparable

As the industry embraces the rise of AI, creating new tools will be a great way to “give yourself a promotion” if done right. Gab advises to re-invest the time AI saves comms leaders in developing the next generation of talent—many of whom also have a suite of tools revolutionizing entry-level work, too.

Therein lies a major opportunity for young PR professionals, Gab believes: rather than learning tasks like formatting coverage reports and searching for reporter contacts, entry-level roles will have more opportunities to learn about foundational strategies that they will rely on for the rest of their careers.

“Just in the way that the PR professionals of the past had to run around to newsstands in New York City to literally clip coverage for their clients, that’s not a job that anyone does anymore,” Gab said. “We’ve since found a new job for the junior person to understand how to find coverage, and we will continue to find work for our new slate of professionals—it will just be very different, and maybe better, work.”

And one bold prediction…

Looking into the crystal ball, Gab anticipates that comms leaders will have more to manage, but they’ll also have a lot more help. The executive of the future will not only be a comms strategist and a mentor to junior team members, but also equal parts AI architect as they build custom workflows that extend their bandwidth and help them focus on the work that truly moves the needle.

“The job of a communications professional will be to manage agents. It will be to build, launch, and give feedback to agents that help assist with communications to drive business value. I’m not saying that there will be only one comms person at every company, that there will be no entry level people, or that there will be no comms people at all. But what I am saying is that our job will move from mostly managing people to mostly managing agents.”

You can follow Gab, her work, and her community at www.joinofftherecord.com.

The first quarter of each year is dominated by events and conferences often seen as “too big to ignore” for many communicators—CES, Davos, and SXSW amongst them.

These events draw upwards of 150,000 attendees from Fortune 500 CEOs to budding entrepreneurs, positioning them as must-attend opportunities to build thought leadership. But as crowds get bigger and stages get more competitive, the value in showing up at these events hasn’t diminished, but it is changing.

The modern “mega events” playbook may look similar for communicators able to leverage iconic business leaders and celebrities to consistently secure top-tier main stage opportunities; but the mid-to-small-scale enterprises often simply lack the name-brand equity to earn space on the stages that deliver the most value. Today, they are often relegated to half-filled rooms and niche talk tracks.

So where is the value for the vast majority of leaders today? It’s around the main stage, not on it.

The industry’s largest events are organically expanding with a suite of third party shoulder programming to match—mixers, sub-conferences, and parties. And this shoulder programming is driving the targeted visibility and intimate connections that executives are finding harder to come by on the show floor.

From networking groups like Unplugged Collective to publishers like Adweek and Business Insider, there’s an ecosystem of speaking engagements just beyond most conferences’ doors. Oftentimes these offer less competitive stages and focused audiences, making it easier for communicators to not only place executives, but put them in front of the audience they are most eager to reach.

The rise of the auxiliary is also giving executives more opportunities to network and build meaningful connections with potential partners. As such, the role of communicators is no longer about securing top-tier speaking engagements, but rather to also wade through a sea of mixers and parties to identify the most fruitful grounds for networking.

This work doesn’t just stop with potential partners, either. Especially amidst ongoing media consolidation and a shift towards independent journalism, in-person touchpoints are essential for building and strengthening reporter relationships.

However, as these flagship events become crowded with announcements from companies too loud to ignore, expect onsite media relations to be less about the next big announcement, and more about offering expert commentary or offering an off-the-record look at what’s in the pipeline in the next quarter.

Communicators are already embracing these shifts, and paired with the burgeoning cost of attending events like GDC—which saw a dip in attendance this year as a result—the modern mega event playbook is seeming like it will involve spending less time, and money, on the show floor.

Esports Insider, one of the longest-standing esports business news outlets, has placed its entire staff on redundancy notice following a manual Google penalty—preventing the site from appearing in search results until it was recently re-listed.

The news marked an unfortunate ending for the UK-based publication, which had served as one of the top sources of B2B esports coverage for 10 years. The downward spiral of ESI arrived 14 months after being sold to an unnamed company—later determined to be Clickout Media.

Clickout has quietly been behind a handful of esports and gaming news site acquisitions over the last few years, including The Escapist, Adventure Gamers, and others; Aftermath’s Jackson Ryan chronicled the company and its practice of using parasite SEO to parlay respected domains into gambling affiliate hubs.

Esports Insider’s longstanding leadership in covering the industry and its sudden dismissal have struck a slice of media already facing headwinds. And while these shifts impact PR and comms pros in the gaming and esports industries, they represent a broader transition communicators broadly must wake up to.

Amidst layoffs and closures, the same top-tier coverage we’ve come to expect from the old guard will exist in smaller, quieter spaces. The independent outlets powered by passionate freelancers and reporter-run Substacks will force us to rethink the importance of “niche” media. This shift isn’t easily captured by traditional PR metrics.

As industry-defining outlets shutter or cut back, PR reporting will see story counts and UVMs plummet. But as readership also shifts as a result, pros will be challenged to find new ways to articulate the value of remaining coverage as it becomes harder and harder to achieve the volume we’ve seen in years past.

• [LA Business First] How disaster-recovery developer Homebound powers its L.A. rebuilding efforts

• [Esports.gg] Subway Surfers esports incoming? Showdown multiplayer makes it possible!

• [Talking Biz News] Yahoo Finance launching two new shows, small biz hub

• [KCAL] Eaton Fire survivors get help rebuilding from high-tech tools

• [Second Life] This Woman Is Leading the Esports Revolution—Here’s How

• [Authority Magazine] Han Park of Payment Labs: How My Career Journey Has Shaped How I Lead Today

• [Newsweek] ‘Fortnite’ X ‘Project Hail Mary’ Crossover Features Co-Op & Live Events

• [Inside World Football] Man City secure reformatted ePremier League title with final win over Leeds

Story ideas, feedback, or just want to get in touch? Email us at contact@jsapartners.co or drop us a line on LinkedIn.