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A founder quote over a dreamy stock image, probably one with clouds. 

A 14-slide thought leadership carousel about “The Future of X.” 

A proper LinkedIn post ending in a suspicious amount of em dashes and the phrase “here’s what I learned.” (AI is already messing with creativity…they gotta take our em dashes too?!? 🤬)

The internet isn’t short on content. It’s short on proof there’s a person on the other side.

Somewhere along the way, "authentic" got filtered, polished, optimized, AI-assisted, and scheduled for 9:02 AM. 

Which, while annoying, is actually pretty good news for PR.

The barrier to making stuff has basically disappeared. Congrats, everyone! You’re a content creator now! Along with everyone else and their chatbot. 

Which means while everyone was arguing about prompts, PR's job description quietly changed. We’ve gotta do what AI literally can’t fake: create moments really worth covering.

​​Here’s where we think the smart PR teams are placing their bets (read: AI wishes it could pull this stuff off).

BTS footage, unscripted founder commentary, "here's what we screwed up" – this is the content diet reporters actually want.

Weirdly enough, the less it looks like it survived six rounds of stakeholder edits, the better. 💃

AI can write a perfectly polished apology, but it can't recreate the awkward honesty of a founder admitting, "Yeah... we blew that one." 

🍗 Exhibit A: when KFC ran out of chicken in the UK, they didn't hide behind a 47-page crisis-comms PDF nobody has opened since 2018. They rearranged their own logo, made it spell "FCK," apologized with a smirk, and earned more goodwill than most brands get from a whole campaign. 

KFC didn't earn headlines because they made a mistake, but because they acted real, not like lawyers.

Nobody forgives a perfect apology…but pretty much anyone will forgive a funny, honest one.

Nobody has ever read a corporate statement and thought, "Dang… 😍that really changed the way I see the world."

AI can summarize an industry trend faster than you brush your teeth. 

What it can't do is tell the story behind the story.

That's where your people come in.

Brian Chesky didn't become one of Airbnb's biggest media assets by sounding like a press release. He became one by consistently showing up with opinions, stories, personal experiences, and a perspective that only comes from actually building the company.

Turns out "person who lived it" is still a pretty compelling source. 🤷‍♀️

If the easiest thing to create nowadays is content (seriously, people are generating entire campaigns while waiting for their coffee order), then what’s the hardest?

🪩 An experience (i.e. getting people to actually leave their house).

Which is exactly why they matter. Whether it's a fitness app hosting a community workout, a camera brand organizing a photo walk, or a fintech company offering financial education workshops, experiences create evidence that content alone can’t. They’re impossible to fake and infinitely more shareable than a banner ad. 

One of our favorite examples is Today at Apple. Free in-store sessions on photography, music, design, and more turn customers into participants with something worth posting besides "look at this product." 

A factory tour. 

Founder walkthroughs of early sketches and failed ideas. 

“How it’s made” livestreams.

The Microsoft Research Blog isn’t just announcing breakthroughs; they're explaining the questions they were trying to answer, the roadblocks they hit, and why the work matters. 

Suddenly, the innovation has a narrative instead of just a launch date, which is more interesting than about 90% of product launches ("here's the weird problem we spent six months trying to solve" will beat "Introducing Version 12.4" almost every time.)

We spent years convincing brands to look flawless. 

Now everyone's fascinated by Version 1.0 and the sticky notes covering the conference room walls. 🤣

The goal isn't to reject AI. 

Use it. Experiment with it. Let it take a few things off your plate. 

(Like writing the first draft of your LinkedIn post that you'll inevitably rewrite anyway.)

The raw materials of great PR haven't changed: 

✔️real stories

✔️real people

✔️real reactions

✔️real experiences

💡 Just don't confuse content creation with attention creation. 

AI can absolutely help write the press release...it just can't create the reason anyone wants to read it.

Ash & Lizzy

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

💔 Rick Broida, a consumer tech writer, was laid off from Yahoo after five years.

💔 Ben Ellman is no longer a producer of The Engadget Podcast, but says he’s far from done covering tech.

🧳 Emily Forlini was hired at Fortune to cover AI and emerging technology. She was previously at PCMag.

🧳 Ann Gehan is now at Bloomberg News covering breaking news and corporate earnings.

🏠 Meredith Haggerty now has a full-time home at The Verge, where she’ll manage reporters, support the Optimizer newsletter, and keep reading stories about the forever fascination who is Elon Musk.

💔 Andrew Hayward, along with most of his editorial team, was laid off from Decrypt, a cryptocurrency news site.

🧳 Daniele Lepido has moved to Bloomberg News to report on tech, with a focus on Europe.

📹 Semifor is betting big on video, hiring Fortune’s Adam Banicki as its first head of video to create video programming for its C-suite audience.

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.