Unveiling the Warsaw Principles: Ethical AI in PR

We cover AI and PR in many of our episodes because we want our fellow PR pros to have the knowledge they need to stay on top of this technology. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the new “Warsaw Principles” unveiled earlier this month on the ethical use of AI in public relations by the International Communications Consultancy Organization (ICCO) at its Global Summit.

Read the story courtesy of ProvokeMedia.com.

 

Transcript

 

Michelle Kane (00:03):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with my company VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of the Mighty Solo PR Pro. How are you, Karen?

Karen Swim, APR (00:21):

Hi. I am doing good for Hump Day. Michelle, how are you?

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Exactly. Not bad, not bad. October's feeling a bit like a steamroller, but I am committed to staying just a few steps ahead of it. How does that sound?

Karen Swim, APR (00:36):

That sounds like all of us these days and 100% agree. I am feeling a little crushed right now.

Michelle Kane (00:49):

And the big picture is, it’s a great problem to have. So always spinning, always spinning the message. But yeah, so it's good. The air's getting crisper. That kind of perks things up a little. And I'll give a shout out now. I don't know what the story will be by the time this drops on Monday, but so far my Phillies are killing it. So life is good here in the Delaware Valley.

Karen Swim, APR (01:16):

Your Phillies are coming in and here in Michigan as we speak, the Lions are looking like a real football team. So go!

Michelle Kane (01:26):

And if the sports world is good, we are good, we're good.

Karen Swim, APR (01:30):

We need to celebrate and look forward to something.

Michelle Kane (01:34):

Amidst all the very serious strife going on. So today we're going to touch on, I know you're probably thinking, “they're talking AI again,” but we are, we're going to talk about AI because something really essential came out of the recent ICCO Global Summit and they are calling them the “Warsaw Principles” and they were ratified as principles for ethical use of AI and public relations. And I don't know about you, Karen, but as I was reading through them, I just kept nodding my head and then thinking, well, of course this is how an ethical communications person should use AI. But as we know, speaking of a steamroller, it is something that we really do need to keep up with before this technology might overrun our society and in a society where mis, mal, and disinformation is so horrifically prevalent.

Karen Swim, APR (02:37):

Yeah, I agree with one of the things for me is that we've talked a lot about the use of generative AI, and we've been keeping an eye on all of the ways that the use of AI, by others, by our audiences impacts our work. So I do think it is an important step. I know that PRSA has also addressed the ethics of AI and talked about this and voices for everyone has definitely put out resources about mis, mal, and disinformation, but I love that they tackled the problems as we move forward in this new world. And it is interesting that this came on the heels of other industries addressing AI and their work. So we saw this come up in the writer’s strike, in the ongoing actor’s strike in the ongoing auto workers strike. AI is playing a big role. And so the reason that we continue to talk about it is because it's developing so quickly and its use is becoming so widespread that we do also have to be very aware that it is a great tool when used properly, but we need to be aware of how it can be abused.

Michelle Kane (03:58):

Exactly. And in any good communication at the forefront should be the communicator's integrity, your credibility. Can you be trusted? Can you be trusted to give transparent and complete and factual information? And because without that, what are we doing?

Karen Swim, APR (04:22):

I agree. And one hope that I have, so one of the principles that, or something that the principals underscore the importance of is accuracy and fact checking. And I have to tell you, this is one of those things that just on a daily basis just causes me a lot of anxiety because even in our own just casual reading, you find that you really do have to check everything. And even with trusted sources. And I am hoping that as we continue to create and utilize AI and it becomes more and more ingrained into our daily lives in the work that we do, that there are also companies that can come up with ways to bulletproof the content that we produce. Because people can take something that you honestly said and repurpose it into something that sends a completely different message. That's a whole different level of monitoring for communications professionals. And it adds a whole new layer of complexity into protecting the reputations of our clients. And that's a scary area, and we've seen it happen. And unfortunately AI learns so it keeps getting better and better.

Michelle Kane (05:50):

So true, so true. And it does point to the need. It's not that we're not going to need our human touch anymore. We are still going to be necessary to do the actual thinking and to have the discernments on how to use these tools. I think especially with context, because I know nuance and context have really suffered in the last at least 30 years, maybe going back a little farther.

The public is less and less inclined to be used to thinking in those ways. And I don't want to sound elitist, but it's like, guys don't take everything at face value. What was the context? Or as communicators, we need to, as best we can, knowing that we are still trying to grab the, what's the current attention span, three to four seconds, maybe five. That's our challenge to present our information in the soundbite without losing the context. So I love that they included that in these principles with AI. And even thinking about intellectual property, I have to think of recently with Drake using Halle Berry's image without her permission. Now that wasn't AI. He made a conscious choice, but that kind of thing might not have happened five years ago. So there's this devolution of what's up for grabs for your use versus what is just either stolen or done without permission.

Karen Swim, APR (07:34):

Yeah. And ensuring that if you're using AI to create images, that you're not violating someone else's protected property. That's really important. And I could see that being a really tricky area as well. So we do need some checks and balances. One of the other things that stood out to me was bias, which is, it's interesting, even though we've started talking about generative AI more this year, at the end of last year, it just exploded into the public conversation. These are conversations that clients and I had a couple of years ago, specifically in FinTech industries where we did data and we saw bias in the data. And this has happened in the housing market where you're using AI tools, you're using data to make decisions that are very biased. And so I think we have to recognize that too, even in our use of tools like ChatGPT and generative AI, ensuring that they are not biased and that we are correcting for that because the tool does learn from us as well. So these are all weighty, complex issues that we can't solve on our own, but we do need to be aware of it. And the way in which we conduct our work needs to adhere to some ethical principles.

Michelle Kane (09:04):

Yes, yes. And even as you were saying that, I was thinking, yes, it's a problem we need to solve for, but I'm glad that it is out. I say out in the open,

Karen Swim, APR (09:17):

Right?

Michelle Kane (09:17):

It's like, oh, yes, there are biases in data sometimes. So we can no longer just turn a blind eye and say, oh no, it's data, it's fine. So now that we have this extra element to consider, I think that's helping us to directly confront some of these larger issues that affect lives.

Karen Swim, APR (09:41):

Well, it's related to this. It's interesting. I just saw something that someone wrote that really made me take a step back and think, because they talked about the whole idea of surveys being inherently biased towards certain abilities. So do surveys, you have surveys about people that have special needs or disabilities, but then you don't make those surveys accessible to that population of people. So who are you really surveying? And even in general surveys where you're asking questions and you're surveying an audience, you're missing a big section of the population maybe by either the way that you offer the surveys and not making them accessible to, for instance, people that don't have site or people who have other issues using computers or online tools or, so we're not solving for those issues. And it just opened up a whole other discussion for me and AVAs being aware of that as well, that as we seek to be inclusive in our communications, we also have to seek to be inclusive in our information gathering and making our content and our ask accessible to larger audiences.

Michelle Kane (11:11):

I love that you said that because imagine sending a survey to someone who, because of their abilities, can't respond to. It's like, that's a little shortsighted. Why would you do that? And I'm sure if you're putting the time in to create a survey, you want actual data because let's get real How many times, just looking at the event world, how many times do you present an event and you say, let's survey all the attendees, and you get maybe 3% return and you think, oh, okay. It's a little disheartening. So think of all those things when you put that together.

Karen Swim, APR (11:53):

And again, this is all, I don't think that any of us can claim to be perfect at this. I certainly count myself among that. I'm definitely not perfect at it. And I see lots of ways that I can improve, and it's particularly harder for small businesses because there's a lot of things to figure out. But I think that having these conversations and being willing to learn and to change and to adapt so that we can be inclusive is really important. And that includes in our use of AI, and then being open and understanding that we need to check for those things as we see not only in how we use AI, but how clients make AI as well.

Michelle Kane (12:40):

And I do love that they cover transparency. Again, that's also important with being upfront with, okay, this was developed with ai. And again, we've said this before. We're not saying every paragraph that you present to your client, you need to let them know what tool you use because that's ridiculous. That falls under spellcheck and all those things. But in the larger picture, especially things I would think like video and audio where things can be so easily manipulated and even to the trained eye, it's getting very, very good at fooling us. And that can be dangerous.

Karen Swim, APR (13:21):

I mean, listen, we are pretty upfront with our clients that we use generative AI as a tool in our work, and they know that just kind of as a blanket overall thing. So there are some things that there are ways that we use it, and we're happy to share that with clients. We're happy to guide the way and show them how they can streamline their processes with some uses of AI as well. So I do think that transparency is important, but I agree with you. We forget that we've used tools like Grammarly and we've used lots of other AI tools in our work for years without even thinking about it. And you don't tell clients, I got this name and information out of this database that uses AI to find reporters that match this thing because that is not really impacting them. So we're going to get normalized about this and we're going to feel less weird about it. But I think some communicators still feel in some way, like they're somehow cheating. They're cheating the system if they're using AI in their work as a tool. Now, if you're just straight up producing content from AI and you are not having any human interaction with it at all, and it's not at all your creation, yeah, that's probably something you need to mess up to for that particular piece. So also probably not the best idea to do that because it is a toll, it is not a replacement for you.

Michelle Kane (14:49):

Correct, correct. And I think what it all comes down to is be a good person, operate within your profession ethically and with consideration. And if you do those things, you'll be okay. If we all do it, we'll all be okay. And the world will be a better place

Karen Swim, APR (15:11):

For all my PRSA members out there. You all know that as a member, you agree to abide by the code of ethics, but even for non-members, it's great thing to go and look at that code of ethics and to refresh yourself on the standard that we should be holding ourselves to whether or not you're a PRSA member, because it really does. Everything that's in the worse off principles that's directed toward AI really flow right into the code of ethics that PRSA has. So if you're abiding by that code, you will find this not onerous at all. You will look at specific things to address in terms of ai, but I just think it's a good idea. September is ethics month at PRSA. So there's tons of resources there too that just happened in September with webinars and all kinds of information and resources. So that's another good place to go if you're looking to really ensure that you are operating ethically.

Michelle Kane (16:18):

That's great. That's great. And yeah, I think PRSAs is a great guiding light for our entire profession, whether or not you are a member. And we hope as you're listening, we hope this is actually energizing you and making you realize that we are going to have so many great new ways to serve our clients. My dogs agree. And just use this as a springboard for making us more efficient, bringing new ways to shine a light on all the good things our clients are doing. And we want to hear from you. Are you using ai? How are you using it? Have you come up against any conundrums? Let us know. It's solo pr pro.com. And if you're getting value from this today, please do share it around. Follow us, all the good things, tag us. We love it. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.