Is artificial intelligence (AI) taking over people’s jobs? What are the policies regulating AI globally? What are the positives and negatives of AI? How are communications and public relations professionals using AI globally? These were few of the questions that were answered recently when the Department of Strategic Communications at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa hosted a hybrid discourse on AI in Strategic Communications.
The hybrid event organized by Dalien Rene Benecke, Caroline Azionya both of University of Johannesburg and speaker suggestion support by Professor Karabo Sitto-Kaunda of University of Pretoria is part of series of practical lessons and interactive engagements for the Master’s students of the department of strategic communications at University of Johannesburg.
“Interestingly, there isn’t data regarding the use of AI by communicators in Nigeria but happenings in the corporate world and government organisations show increased acceptance and deployment of AI application and tools,” Mohammed Abdullahi, Lead Consultant at Spider & Ink Communications based in Lagos, Nigeria stated while presenting AI at the cross section of public relations practice in Nigeria.
While public relations have grown exponentially from lower level to top level management decision making cadre in Nigeria, AI applications including chatbots and social media use of algorithms for targeted audience messaging deployed by corporates like banks, creatives, marketers and more have greatly helped in reducing to a large extent cumbersome human interaction and most importantly, solve myriads of problems with minimal efforts.
The challenges of AI in Nigeria obviously are plentiful. Aside ambiguous policies and in many cases, outright lack of policies, slow internet speed with Nigeria ranked around 137th in the world as well as average level internet penetration of about 55 percent which excludes over 100 million people from accessing internet in this digital age is worrisome.
Earlier, in opening the discourse, Anne Gregory Professor Emeritus of Corporate Communication at the University of Huddersfield, shared detailed global data excluding Africa on the usage and practice of AI. However, what remains challenging is the policies and laws regulating this growing phenomenon of AI application in every sector globally.
The usage of AI amongst communicators is increasingly growing particularly in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (USA) where various tools and applications are available for creatives to ideate, prepare and send out messages to the targeted audience.
As per the fears of AI replacing humans and taking over jobs, Professor Anne and other speakers believe AI could only complement the work of humans at best. Rather than take over human jobs, people who understand how to use and apply AI tools would be at advantage of securing their respectful jobs.
There are palpable similarities between Nigeria and South Africa from the presentation of Ethel Ramos, Managing Director of AvatarPR and Vice President of Public Relations Institute of South Africa (PRISA).
The students were amazed by the practical demonstration of AI tools, ranging from voice and photos cloning, creation and application seamlessly carried out by Darren and Anna, owners of Lucky Hustle, an AI creative agency in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The bottom-line is very clear. Communicators and creatives must evolve and embrace AI in order to meet timely, yet challenging clients demands and stay relevant in the industry, but it is of utmost importance that AI usage and practices are unambiguously regulated to provide strong rules that will distinguish positive and negative actions of AI application with a well-defined punishment for the latter.
Mohammed Abdullahi is a PR Professional based in Lagos, Nigeria was recently in South Africa.
