Humanoid artificial intelligence, media conferences and natural responses to journalists’ questions: The end of (human-to-human) public relations?

In a world-first human-robot media conference (held in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 2023), highly life-like humanoid robots gave answers of unprecedented sophistication to journalists’ questions. The media conference highlighted the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the dynamics of public relations with extraordinary speed and, in particular, now posing a very real threat to the jobs of (human) practitioners. It is also likely to lead to the devaluing of professional communication undertaken by human beings. This polemical essay not only contends that scholars and practitioners have moved too slowly to consider the impacts of rapidly evolving AI on the profession, but also calls for both practitioners and academics to safeguard interpersonal (human) communication by urgently considering the possibility that many human-held jobs and livelihoods will be lost to increasingly sophisticated – and now ultra-realistic humanoid – AI much sooner than had been anticipated. Indeed, AI is creating ever-greater job losses that only exacerbate existing social inequities.