AI in Public Relations with Antony Cousi...

Antony Cousins discusses GPTs and how to use them in PR with host Jason Mudd.

Guest:

Our episode guest is Antony Cousins, Executive Director for AI Strategy at Cision. Antony is an accredited public relations practitioner who honed his PR and communications expertise in a variety of roles in UK Government organizations, including the Ministry of Defence, Home Office, and Cabinet Office.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. What GPTs are 
2. Implications GPTs have in the PR industry
3. What autopilot AI is
4. How to build GPTs
5. How to prepare your employees for a world with AI

Quotables

• “I fell into it really by accident.” - Antony Cousins
• “I was in that startup for five and a half years basically iterating, building on, and learning how to implement AI in businesses. And that stayed with me. Basically, I didn't want to do anything other than AI after that.” - Antony Cousins
• “People ended up doing jobs that were more interesting and more fulfilling and automating the kind of tasks that you don't really want to be doing as a human. And I think that's the thing that drives me.” - Antony Cousins
• “AI can't replace the human touch.” - Jason Mudd
• “We're not trying to remove the human from the process, just automate the basics, like the 80% is a good way to think about it.” - Antony Cousins
• “The human still needs to add that empathy still needs to add the emotional understanding, the contextual awareness that the model won't have.” - Antony Cousins
• “AI can replace some of the busy work that we don't like to do or the tedious tasks and work we don't like to do.” - Jason Mudd
• “If you create a campaign and your content happens to plagiarize a campaign from some competitor from two years ago, the reputational impact is still yours. So you still need to take responsibility.” - Antony Cousins
• “If you can think about writing your prompts in a very literal way, you're going to get a better outcome.” - Jason Mudd
• “That's exactly the value of an agency and the value of a specialist is because they've got more contextual awareness and a whole bunch of history of your brand, of your situation, of other competitors doing the same things.” - Antony Cousins
• “The idea is that generative AI is a good first draft, but it's never going to be a great final draft. So it's a good beginning and a bad ending.” - Jason Mudd

If you enjoyed this episode, would you please share it with others and leave us a review?

About Antony Cousins

Over the last 23 years, Ant has held diverse roles in media relations, strategic communications, political analysis, counter-terrorism, and, over the last 10 years, AI-tech leadership including CEO of an AI startup focused on detecting fake news and misinformation. Ant is currently Head of AI Strategy for Cision, the largest global provider of media intelligence technology as well as the Tech Hub Chair of the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communications (AMEC). He is an accredited PR practitioner, CIPR committee member, part of the UK's All-Party parliamentary group on AI, and was named in PRWeek's 'Dashboard 25' in 2023 for tech influencers.

Episode recorded: November 13, 202

Support the show

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.