By Joel Wyse, Communication – Stewardship - AI Delivery and Enablement Division
Why great content matters more than ever
AI is everywhere in communications right now. It promises speed, scale, personalisation, and efficiency. It delivers, when it’s used well. Let’s be clear from the outset: AI is not here to replace communicators. AI still depends on one critical input, you.
Used well, AI is my powerful ally. Communication teams are small and we need to be accurate, productive, relevant and targeted with a short turnaround. Here is how it helps me.
The myth of ‘let AI handle it’
There is a growing temptation to treat AI as a communications solution in it’s own right. Feed it a prompt, press go, and expect clarity, relevance, and impact to appear. Dear reader, it does not.
Communicators and subject matter experts already hold deep, contextual understanding of who their audiences are, what they care about, and what messaging will cut through. When that expertise is paired with AI, you have a great ally for not just content generation but also ideation.
I never delegate wholesale to AI my strategic approach, storytelling decisions, final content, audience prioritisation and core messaging — those remain my responsibility. We all need help generating ideas from time to time. AI is a great brainstorming partner for me, to test concepts, I generate new ideas and build out a story concept in multiple ways and do it all quickly.
If you get writers block, try this, I use Chat GPT or CoPilot;
- Can you give me three different 300 word narrative stories explaining [insert subject in detail] so it will engage [insert audience] if they see it [insert channel].
- make one funny, one sad and one inspirational.
The output can take your subject out of context; it can match your thinking or show you where not to go. It helps me sharpen the strategic direction and play off ideas for content.
Personalisation without losing the plot
AI can group audiences based on similarities, predicting what message type, tone, or format is most likely to resonate. With the right prompts, AI can apply nuance, guided by your experience.
For example, I use CoPilot to reframe lengthy content when writing to leadership or management audience. A prompt I use often is:
'Summarise this information in 400 words or less, use language that is concise, outline what a leader will need to know, what they need to tell their team, what actions they need to take, what can they expect to happen and when will it happen.'
The prompt identifies the information I know my audience needs and I can draft my messaging based on the summary and cross check for accuracy.
Some scale comes when I can take the message I have for management and prompt to reframe for other audiences I need to segment.
This insight and summary is useful and time saving, but only if it’s grounded in the understanding of the subject, the organisation and the audience.
Where AI actually adds value
Once you’ve clearly defined your audience segments, you can anchor your communications in a strong primary piece of content, designed for your target audience.
This is where AI earns its place. AI supports nuance. It doesn’t invent it.
Generative AI can the help adapt your core message for different audience groups, at scale. AI can adjust language, emphasis, voice and tone without requiring separate manual drafts. Announcements, campaign messages, explainers, AI makes relevance achievable without unsustainable effort.
Only if you know what ‘good’ looks like.
AI does not understand your strategy, values, or organisational context. It predicts the next most likely words based on patterns in data. This means the quality of its output is a direct reflection of the quality of what you give it.
AI amplifies your content. It does not replace it.
The non-negotiable: a strong core message
My most effective AI driven communications always start in the same place: a well defined core message targeted at the primary audience. This might be a strategic narrative, key message framework, policy summary, or campaign brief, that clearly articulates:
- The purpose of the communication
- The key messages that must remain consistent
- The desired tone
- A voice the resonates and reflects your audience
- Any constraints, sensitivities, or priorities
This becomes the source of truth.
When I ask AI to tailor messages for different audiences, it draws from this foundation with my prompts. Without it, AI fills the gaps by guessing, and those guesses often lead to vague, generic, or misleading messaging.
Poor input leads to poor output.
High quality input however, delivers scalable quality outputs.
A prompt I use in CoPilot regularly is:
'Take the below message that is written for [this audience], use all the information in the message and reframe in [X number of words] to target [this audience, be specific with what you know]. Make sure it uses language at [desired reading level], in a [desired tone] and emphasis [what is most important for the audience].'
There are endless variations of the above and it may take a few targeted follow up prompts, and I always edit and review to get the message where it needs to be. When I know my audiences I can be explicit with the differences between them and make sure that I prompt for that difference to be accommodated.
In a small team or working on my own, I can still have quality, targeted content in a significantly shorter timeframe.
AI as an enabler, not a replacement
Don’t hand communications over to AI, design systems around you, where AI supports your expertise. Communicators remain responsible for strategy, judgment, ethics, nuance and storytelling. AI handles speed, variation, and personalisation.
By investing in strong core messaging, clear audience frameworks, and disciplined thinking, you can safely and effectively leverage AI to target multiple diverse audiences with quality, relevance and consistency to build trust.
The result, is not less human communication. It’s better capacity for human communication, supported by intelligent tools.
As AI continues to evolve, one truth remains unchanged: technology can optimise delivery, but meaning still starts with people.