Recently, I wrote an opinion piece for PRWeek, centered around the appropriate use of AI within PR and marketing. While I am a huge AI fan in some areas, I’m also more wary in others.
As communicators, my team is tasked with translating technical topics into digestible, interesting and compelling stories. We work with the media to help tell these stories, through a lens that is also worthy of their readers. This is a deeply collaborative and creative process and one that cannot be replaced by a tool that today is an aggregator of various inputs.
We are using AI to assist with research and other administrative tasks, allowing team members to spend more time doing the creative work. All of our content, planning and activations – marketing programs, story angles, etc. — are all generated by our people.
But, I’ve learned that this isn’t the case for everyone. I’ve heard from friends in the media that they are increasingly receiving pitches, story ideas and content that is AI generated. While AI may have helped someone speed their output, it didn’t make it better and it didn’t end with their desired result. They were rejected.
In the old days, every agency – and most companies – had anti-plagiarism policies, but seemingly few have clear AI usage policies.
The W2 Communications team members pride ourselves on our expertise, industry knowledge, creativity and the results we generate. All of this comes from our drive for originality. And, to that end, we continue to update and enforce our originality policy that was once focused on plagiarism and today also encompasses AI.
I’m sharing it here for all to see. I hope others see this and use it to inspire their own policies and improve the way our entire industry employs ethical uses of AI.
The W2 Communications Originality Policy
W2 Communications is dedicated to creativity and originality. We are committed to providing clients unique programs, campaigns and content that help set them apart. To that end, all work products must be 100% original to the agency and our team members. At no time will a client, media outlet, partner or other entity be provided with something that is not completely unique. Sources and source materials will be clearly noted with substantiating third-party data, anecdotes or other support points, clearly notated and attributed. We have no patience or acceptance of anything less than 100% originality.