The debate surrounding the actual value creation of communications management goes back much further than the current discussion about the role of AI in corporate communications and agencies. Media scholar Michael Kunczik fueled this debate well into the 1990s by consistently using the terms PR and propaganda synonymously and, when asked about the daily work of communications managers, paraphrasing a statement from Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo”: “Public relations workers are a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything.” This (mis)understanding still precedes the discipline, and therefore it is no surprise that communication tasks are regularly defined today as bullshit jobs that can be done by AI sooner or later.
What is more surprising is that communication experts in companies and agencies not only rarely and consistently counter this misperception but often promote it. In the self-perpetuating dynamic of (so far primarily promised) efficiency, precision, and effectiveness gains by the use of generative and agentic AI in communication management, worrying tendencies toward self-dwarfing are emerging. However, there is absolutely no reason for this.
AI will undoubtedly be an important tool in corporate communications and PR consulting, but its limitations and problematic effects are also becoming apparent. References to AI-workslop – AI-generated content that appears professional but is shallow and error-prone – are increasing, and there is now a wealth of scientific research on the effects of using AI in intellectual work (such as that by Nataliya Kosmyna et al. from the MIT Media Lab), which vividly illustrates the consequences of “cognitive debt from using AI.” In short, AI use tends to promote the homogenization of results in intellectual problem-solving and reduces the ability to remember the content created. And with some AI solutions, it’s fair to ask where the accusation of “bullshit” is truly justified. “Our AI has transformed your scientific text into a shareable cartoon” certainly qualifies.
At the heart of communicative value creation in business, politics, and society lies advice and consulting: whether strategic and conceptual or tactical and operational, personal and supportive or organizational and assistive, content-shaping or communicative and mediating. In this sense, the tasks in companies and agencies are very similar. The decisive success factor lies in the quality and effectiveness of the advice. And that is precisely the domain of communications management and will remain so. When it matters, people will continue to seek the advice of people. They want to sense sound judgment, experience, and accountability. And decision-makers will justifiably react with skepticism if they get the impression that an AI tool knows more than its PR operator.
Besides developing and providing these skills, there is another key factor for effective communication advice, and that lies in the self-conception of those responsible for communication. It is obvious that neither “inventive dwarfs” nor “cognitively challenged PR machinists” offer attractive prospects here. In a world of increasing polarization and confrontation, too much is at stake in communication to risk the credibility or intellectual rigor of communication management. One can only agree with the journalist Helmut van Rinsum when he emphasizes that the much-discussed role of the “human in the loop” in the use of AI must not be reduced to “the scapegoat who takes the fall when something goes wrong.”
There’s no magic formula for developing the right self-understanding as a communicative advisor. But you can draw inspiration from others. In his 1919 account of the Endurance expedition to Antarctica, during which he saved his crew from certain death against the most adverse conditions, Sir Ernst Shackleton mentions the presence of another, imaginary person. Modern psychology has coined the term “third-man phenomenon” for this and similar occurrences. On June 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong saved the Apollo 11 mission because the lunar module, contrary to the intended automated procedures, manually steered over a boulder field at the landing site. Shackleton’s inner voice had provided him food for thought during a challenging time, and Armstrong found deep insights looking out of the Eagle ‘s window, distrusting the onboard computer’s data. Both perspectives should also be provided by communicative advice.
