I spent ONLY 12 minutes this morning watching an AI summarize a 45-page strategy document that would have normally cost me three hours and a headache. It churned out ten headline variations before my kettle had even boiled. It’s fast, it’s impressive, and if you’re in marketing, it is arguably the biggest productivity boost we’ve seen since email replaced the memo cart. But there is a dangerous trap opening up right now. We are confusing output with outcome. We’re getting seduced by the speed. We’re starting to think that because we can generate a 500-word announcement in seconds, the job is done. But the "job" of internal comms was never about typing words. It was never about hitting "send." The job is moving people. And you can’t automate the messy, political, emotional reality of human beings.
AI is the ultimate "Yes Man." You ask for a draft, it gives you a draft. It doesn't care if the strategy is half-baked. It won't pause and say, "Hey, are you sure we should be announcing a hiring freeze in the same email as record profits?" That’s where curiosity and grit come in. An algorithm can answer a question, but it cannot ask the uncomfortable ones. It can't sit across from a stakeholder who just wants to "get something out there" and gently persuade them that they don't have a communication problem, they have a clarity problem. That requires a spine, not a prompt.
This is why relationships remain the currency of our profession. When a crisis hits on a Friday afternoon, the outcome isn't determined by how fast you can type. It’s determined by the political capital you’ve banked with leadership over the last two years. It’s the trust that allows you to walk into the CEO’s office and say, "We cannot say this, and here is why." The comms pro with the best prompts is efficient, but the comms pro with the best relationships is effective. There is a massive difference.
Perhaps the biggest gap is history. AI operates in a vacuum of logic, it doesn't know the emotional history of your organization. It doesn’t know that the last Town Hall was a disaster, or that the engineering team is cynical about "transformation," or that the employees in the Dublin office are still bruised from the restructure last November. An AI sees a "restructuring announcement." A human sees a potential riot. That nuance is everything. It’s the difference between a message that lands and a message that burns bridges.
Ultimately, judgment is the ability to look at ten perfectly grammatically correct options and know that nine of them will get you fired. It’s the gut instinct that tells you the tone is just slightly off—too cheerful for a somber moment, or too corporate for a team that values authenticity. You can’t train a model on "the vibe," but you ignore the vibe at your peril. AI is going to raise the floor for everyone; bad writers will become competent writers. But the ceiling? The ceiling is still defined by the fundamentals. Master the human stuff first, and tinker with the robots second.
