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Remember when everyone poured one out for the dead press release? 

Gone but not forgotten. RIP. 🥀

Except plot twist: the press release has risen from the dead. And apparently, the robots are fans.

As AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity become part of how people discover information, they’re also the humble press release’s new audience.

LLMs are increasingly pulling from public sources to build answers; i.e., the words in a press release can become part of what AI tells people about a company, product, announcement, etc.

The numbers back it up: Muck Rack found that press release citations in AI-generated answers increased 5x in 2025. That’s, like, the same rate our doomscrolling increased. 🫠

Before we start optimizing every headline for our new robot overlords, though, let’s remember why press releases mattered in the first place. 

The press release hasn't exactly been sitting in the attic collecting dust – 86% of journalists surveyed said they used press releases as a story source in 2025, making them the most-used source in the survey.

It’s not a guaranteed ticket to coverage, but it gives journalists an actual story-shaped thing to work with. It also creates an official, searchable record of company news. 

In other words: a way to get the right information out there while the news is still news. And now AI has a clear source of information about you, too.

Basically, the press release went from begging and pleading “please cover us” to “here’s what happened, for anyone who needs to know.”

Very Spider-Man: same message, much bigger audience (with great reach comes great responsibility).

And this new audience raises the stakes on something that was already pretty important: quality.

If a press release can become source material for what AI says about your company, you’re not just writing for the journalist who might cover you. You’re putting information into the public record that could get picked up, summarized, repeated, and resurfaced later.

Which means the basics matter more than ever: 

✅ Clear, factual language. 

✅ Specific claims and numbers. 

✅ Obvious attribution. 

✅ Less corporate fluff.

And there's no need to start writing like you're trying to impress a search algorithm. 

The best “AI-friendly” press release is just… a good press release. Wild, we know.

AI can be incredibly useful when creating a press release. 

Need five headline options? Sure.

Want someone to flag the paragraph that's 87% industry jargon? Absolutely.

AI can help organize messy information, tighten language, find gaps, and pressure-test whether the news actually makes sense to someone who wasn't in that one meeting.

And this isn’t some hypothetical future PR workflow: PR Newswire found that 57% of comms professionals already use AI to craft some part of their press releases.

But there's a pretty important line between letting AI help write the release, and letting it just make things up.

You know how ChatGPT literally warns you at the bottom of the chat that it can make mistakes? That little disclaimer isn't decorative. 

If we had a church, “AI answers are not gospel” would be printed on the front of the hymnal. 

Amen.

AI can hallucinate statistics. 

Invent details. 

Turn a vague claim into an incorrect one.

And please, for the love of journalism, do not let it manufacture an executive quote. 🤦‍♀️

A release that contains inaccurate information isn't just bad PR anymore. Because if that content gets picked up as a source, those inaccuracies could get repeated elsewhere. Like in AI-generated answers. 

Oh, how the turntables.

So: use AI as your editor, not your source of truth. 

Great intern. Terrible executive.

The best approach isn't humans vs. AI; it's humans plus AI. 

With everyone staying in their lane.

Humans handle: the news, the strategy, the relationships, the facts, the voice.

AI handles: the brainstorming, organizing, editing, weak-spot finding, and annoying questions.

Humans handle: the final fact-check and the big red “PUBLISH” button. Because, ya know. Consequences.

The goal isn’t to automate PR. 

It’s to make good PR more efficient, and harder to get wrong.

Because the press release didn’t die. Its job grew. 

Now journalists and machines may be reading it.

When your audience includes anyone (or anything) that can repeat your words to millions of people…getting the details right isn’t exactly optional anymore.

Feeling a little bot-induced anxiety? Fair. But it doesn’t have to be complicated.

The best press release doesn’t have to be the most AI-optimized. 

Write something clear, credible, and useful to humans, and it’ll generally be easier for machines to understand, too.

Keep it simple:

👌 Clear headlines.

👌 Specific facts.

👌 Useful context.

👌 Objective language.

👌 Fewer buzzwords.

In other words, clarity is having a comeback, too. 🦸‍♀️

Just remember: the robots are reading. We suggest giving them something worth repeating.

Ash & Lizzy

Who's going where and why it matters. Not just job shifts - power dynamics, layoffs, and who's headed out.

🎉 Owen Dahlkamp is the new Congress Tech Reporter at Politico.

🧳 Zach Dorfman has joined The Washington Post, where he’ll report on the intelligence community and national security.

🎉 Ashley Gold has joined Semafor as a Senior Technology Correspondent, where she’ll cover AI and global politics.

🧳 Alyssa Kraus has moved from CNN to The Associated Press. As the Engagement Editor at AP, she’ll curate the homepage, manage push alerts, and oversee social media.

🎉 Naomi Nix has joined TIME as a Senior Technology Correspondent.

🎉 Elyse Betters Picaro is the new EIC at ZDNET.

💔 Jessica Schulberg was laid off from HuffPost. She's among the 33% of staff cut in BuzzFeed's latest layoffs.

🎉 John Simons is the new Senior Director of Business and Media at CNN.

Get to know Ashley and Lizzy, learn more about The Colab, or pass The Brief along to a friend who should be reading this too.