ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT IN PUBLIC RELATIONS: Industry Promises, Potential Pitfalls and a Proposed Framework for a Path Forward

artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are transforming how organizations and stakeholders connect with one another. For public relations, a practice centered on relationship building, AI tools require careful reflection on potential ethical and theoretical implications. This chapter examines how AI-based technology providers have described the “challenges solved” and the “benefits realized” of AI and it shares noteworthy findings from a series of in-depth interviews with leading public relations, communication technology, and measurement experts regarding the potential for AI to be used for stakeholder engagement. After revisiting an existing theoretical model that describes the progression of relationship building, this chapter applies insights from the content analysis and interviews to re-imagine relationship building models within the context of increasingly sophisticated AI tools. The updated framework provides guidance for ethically managing the progression of AI-enabled organizational–public relationships.