AI May Be Here to Stay, but so is Human Guidance
Why Authentic Marketing Still Starts with Empathy and Human Connection
It’s clear that Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work and even the way we communicate. In public relations and marketing, AI tools can now generate press releases, summarize media coverage and even write advertising copy in seconds. But the question it poses is where this new AI-driven world is going and who’s in the driver’s seat.
Are we using AI to enhance human creativity or are we letting it replace the very instincts that make communication effective in the first place? The past few years have offered cautionary tales of what happens when automation replaces, not complements, human judgment.
When AI Gets It Wrong
When organizers of the Women in Medicine Summit asked ChatGPT to suggest prominent female physicians for their upcoming conference, they expected a list of living, qualified women leaders in the field. What they got instead were male names, offered with polite disclaimers like, “not female, but…” and suggestions that completely overlooked the thousands of women shaping modern medicine.
As Ms. Magazine reported, even when the prompts were crystal clear, “prominent women physicians alive today," the language model defaulted to men. When asked to name female doctors on television, it included Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Mehmet Oz. The irony is that AI despite using a female voice, couldn’t imagine one in a leadership role in healthcare.
The Creative Industry’s Quiet Crisis
In the design and visual arts industries, artists are now being replaced by AI systems trained on their own work, without consent or compensation. Tools that promise to generate a “brand identity” in seconds often do so by scraping millions of existing pieces created by real designers. We’re witnessing a growing disregard for creative labor, and with it, rising ethical and legal concerns around ownership.
The results were seeing are often content that looks technically polished, but feels generic, missing the intuition, cultural sensitivity, and emotional intelligence only human creators bring.
Earlier this year, Disney and Universal filed a landmark copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, alleging the AI platform trained on and reproduced copyrighted images of their most iconic characters, like Spider-Man and Shrek, without permission. The studios argue that Midjourney’s practices threaten the foundation of U.S. copyright law.
But here’s the more troubling question: if it takes Disney and Universal to be heard, what recourse is there for independent artists whose work is scraped without consent?
What happens to the illustrators, designers, photographers, and small creators who don’t have in-house legal teams or industry influence to protect their work? These are the very people whose styles have been fed into generative AI tools, only to be replicated and redistributed without acknowledgment or compensation.
The truth is, if the industry doesn’t draw the line now, it won’t just be brands or studios losing creative control, it will be creators themselves. Without systemic protections, a new era of “invisible theft” will become the norm, not the exception.
AI Works Best With a Human Touch
Some of the most effective campaigns today are driven by AI, not because humans stepped back, but because they stepped in.
When Hidden Valley Ranch and its parent company, Clorox, initially used AI for ad creation, the results were forgettable at best. But by incorporating human editors who fine-tuned the visuals and messaging, the brand saw real performance improvements. The campaign became a case study in how human oversight can transform AI from a novelty into a strategic asset.
So Clorox pivoted. Instead of letting AI fully generate final content, they used it to rapidly produce early drafts and iterations, which their human creative team then reviewed and reworked. Copywriters added punchy, brand-specific humor. Designers refined visuals to feel less artificial and more aligned with consumer expectations. The AI became a sketchpad but not the final brush.
With that hybrid approach, the revised campaign saw stronger engagement and faster turnaround times. In internal reviews, the AI-human collaboration outperformed both the AI-only and human-only versions in metrics like click-through rates and visual recall.
What changed? They stopped asking AI to be the creative director and started using it as a creative assistant.
The Future is Human-Guided
The best campaigns are not powered by AI alone, they are led by professionals who know how to use it strategically to enhance their work and not replace it. They apply human context to interpret and refine outputs, ensuring that messaging aligns with audience expectations and cultural nuance. They prioritize ethics and intentional storytelling.
In a moment when public trust in the media, brands, and institutions is increasingly fragile, communications professionals must lead with an ethical responsibility and transparency. AI can’t tell when a message might alienate a community. It can’t foresee how a crisis might evolve. It doesn’t know the difference between what is smart and what is merely fast. But people do, and that is why human oversight should be prioritized.
The future of PR, marketing, and communications lies not in AI replacing people, but in people guiding AI. My takeaway is that AI is incomplete without human insight.
While AI can write a first draft, analyze data, and provide structure, it can’t replace the purpose, nuance, and accountability that only humans can bring to the table. The most impactful campaigns will come from human-AI collaboration, where technology drives efficiency, and people ensure there is meaning and ethical alignment.