Message from the IPRA President: Shaping our future – educating AI July 2024

(Comments)

3 days, 17 hours ago

Dear friends and colleagues,

In the world of Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT is not the only AI tool. But it is the most used.  So, I was wondering, what does ChatGPT know about Public Relations? More precisely what would be its answer to the question: What is the definition of Public Relations?

Defining PR

To be clear I used a basic version of the ChatGPT tool. Its answers referenced different sources:  the Public Relations Society of America, the British Chartered Institute of Public Relations,  and the International Public Relations Association.  As you may recall IPRA adopted a revised definition of Public Relations at our Board meeting in Yerevan, Armenia in 2019. That definition was aimed to be fit for the times we live in and it reads:  "Public relations is a decision-making management practice tasked with building relationships and interests between organizations and their publics based on the delivery of information through trusted and ethical communication methods."

Now in 2019 we were aware that practitioners and academics have been defining PR for decades. And what we wanted to do then came from a recognition that we live in a dynamic world. So, we offered our new definition as we saw the world then.  In 2019 no one was thinking about educating ChatGPT or any other AI tool but, as my experiment proved, that is exactly what we did.

The only way is ethics

Thanks to IPRA’s new definition, AI is not just calling Public Relations a communication process or a discipline but rather a decision-making management practice.  And within that management practice, ChatGPT has picked-up that it must be an ethical practice.  How do you act ethically? Communicate with purpose, with consistency, and make yourself a trusted and reliable source. Check more info about IPRA’s PR definition here and give us your feedback. And if IPRA makes changes to this definition based on your feedback, it is because we believe in the power of communication to build relationships and to change minds.

If you are not already an IPRA member, I invite you to join us in our mission for ethical communication.

Kind regards,

Nataša Pavlović Bujas

IPRA President 2024

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