Do you ever get the feeling that the artificial intelligence train is moving just a little too fast? If so, you and countless corporations have a lot in common. There’s no denying AI’s ability to transform teams and businesses, and not just to help reduce risk but to maximize and unlock value (if leveraged responsibly). But right now, as you read this, there are teams across the corporate landscape trying to figure out a way to hold the train at the station long enough, so they don’t end up in an unintended and costly destination. The only problem is, their passengers – AKA employees – want the train to leave, and now.
Train analogies aside, for my financial services organization, we’re excited about the many ways AI can potentially help us support consumers in the future, how we understand and leverage cultural nuances across our global workforce and how the simplest use cases can make the most meaningful differences in our daily workflows and activities. But we’re also being incredibly methodical and careful about where we start on our journey, and the unintended consequences it can have for our business today (e.g., data security, regulatory compliance, etc.), regardless of the advantages we see in the future.
To combat this, one of the first things we’ve done is establish an AI Center of Excellence with cross-business representation – both functionally and geographically. We’ve used this body of Information Technology, Operations, Information Security, Legal, Compliance and Communications leaders to source requests for new AI tools teams want to use, set a strategy for how we’ll methodically introduce more capabilities and educate our entire workforce on the power and risks associated with AI. Every conversation begins with, “Is this a must-have, or a nice-to-have?” It’s hard not to acknowledge the unsettling feeling that anything we put into the tool(s) has a chance to potentially come out somewhere else we can’t control.
Now, I want to make it clear that this isn’t an argument for being last, it’s an argument for not feeling you have to be first. We’re aiming to counterbalance the urge we all have – even in our personal lives – to “AI-ify” everything. By setting our guardrails early and developing our governance first, we’re able to speed up responsibly when we need to, and ultimately want to.
For our Global Corporate Communications team, we’re already employing Microsoft CoPilot to support our media training efforts, test the resonance of messaging, scale the content we create for multiple channels and even help bridge the language divide for our nearly 8,000 colleagues across nine countries. It’s a critical partner in helping us conduct research for thought leadership, speeding up our writing and describing abstract, complex business scenarios in the easiest-to-understand terms. Recording a video of a leader using a teleprompter, resulting in eyes that move all over the screen? AI can fix that!
All of this is to say that while we feel we live in a new era of digital disruption and transformation (and we do), traditional planning and governance is still our friend. We still need to understand what our audiences want, need and how they feel about what they receive. AI can aid that, but traditional communications planning continues to interpret the human nuances better than anything we have today. That planning also helps us decide which AI tools in our Comms TechStack to employ, in what order and for what specific purpose.
Balancing the exciting outcomes we can achieve through AI with the potential risks it poses isn’t easy. However, as communications practitioners and the ultimate stewards of our organizations’ reputations, it’s critical we get this right.
Faryar Borhani chief communications officer at Encore Capital Group and a PRWeek’s 40 Under 40 recipient, oversees global corporate communications strategy across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Since joining in 2021, he has launched major initiatives, including the company’s ESG strategy and the Economic Freedom Study. With previous experience advising Fortune 500 leaders at ICF Next and managing communications for FOX Soccer, Borhani’s expertise spans corporate reputation, crisis management, and digital transformation. He is a member of the USC Center for PR board of advisers.