The PR and AI Weekly Roundup Sep 19 2025

Welcome to the first of the PR AI roundups where we have a look at what the experts are saying and spot not only the common trends but items that stick out.

This week's big theme may seem fairly obvious: AI is everywhere, but it’s not magic. Teams face three linked problems — hype, hallucinations, and bad change management. Meanwhile discovery is changing: search traffic is shrinking and chatbots are becoming the new gatekeepers. For PR and comms pros that means two priorities: protect trust, and get discoverable where people actually look.

Key commentary

Across these pieces you’ll see the same prescriptions: train people, design AI for specific workflows, and stop treating AI as a one-click cost saver. Invest in community and owned channels. Build buyer-facing tools, not just sales scripts. And rethink SEO for a generative era — context and third-party validation now beat old keyword tactics.

Four highlights

1. Christopher Penn — “What’s On My Mind”
   Penn argues sales is broken for today’s overloaded buyers and proposes “buyer enablement” powered by generative AI. He gives a practical playbook: convert your sales playbook into transparent buyer playbooks (NotebookLM, GPTs), and use his GRACE framework — Give time, Reduce pain, Assure safety, Cover their ass, Empower the buyer — to earn shortlist placement without pestering people. Big PR/comms angle: put reusable, shareable assets into the hands of buyers and communities, not behind gated demos.

2. Michael MacLennan — crisis communications playbook (Sept 4, 2025)
   MacLennan (with Amanda Coleman) maps AI across seven crisis stages — monitoring, situation assessment, drafting, stakeholder engagement, execution, monitoring, and after-action learning. Practical takeaway: AI can do ~30% (clustering, triage, drafts), but humans must own judgment, empathy, and legal risk. For PR teams: build prompt libraries, run quarterly fire-drills, and never paste personal data into public LLMs.

3. Paul Fabretti — weekly digest
   Fabretti flags urgent platform shifts: Google’s AI Overviews are already cutting referral traffic (25–30% drop reported), and deepfakes are exploding — both huge threats to earned media and SEO. Action items for comms: prioritise direct channels (newsletters, community), require disclosure when using AI in executive communications, and prepare verification/rapid-response plans for synthetic misinformation.

4. Martin Waxman — Digital Marketing Trends
   Waxman names Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as the next SEO: chatbots surface context and trusted third-party validation, not keywords. For PR and SEO teams this means integrated work across PR, structured data, content, and community signals so AI answer engines cite you. Start small: map common buyer prompts, harden authoritative content, and push trusted third-party mentions.

Closing

Small experiments, big preparation. Train people. Share transparent AI-ready assets. Own the channels where buyers actually decide.