Is PR Having Its Comeback Thanks to Generative AI?

I'll never forget the sinking feeling in that boardroom.

We'd just secured a central page spread in the Yorkshire Post for a screw manufacturing company. Not an easy win. We laid it out on the table, proud as anything, only for the managing director to ask: "How many screws is this going to sell us?"

That question changed my career path. I left PR for SEO because I wanted to answer it.

Now, years later, I'm watching something unexpected happen. PR is becoming essential again. Not despite AI, but because of it.

The Generative Engine Paradox

Here's what's changed. By 2026, the primary way consumers find brands will be through conversation with Large Language Models. Over 1 billion prompts hit ChatGPT every day. More than 71% of Americans already use AI search to research purchases.

This isn't coming. It's here.

Back when I was doing SEO, you could write an amazing blog post with unique information and potentially rank for it. Your own content, on your own site, could be enough.

Not anymore.

Generative engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini scan hundreds of websites in fractions of a second. They read the actual contents of those articles. They're looking for patterns, for consensus, for authority signals.

You need other people talking about your message.

That's where PR comes back into the picture. Because while AI can produce content at scale, it can't build relationships. It can't pick up the phone. It can't become a trusted source that journalists reach out to when they need an expert quote.

Why News Organisations Still Dominate

I've been tracking this closely. The Ahrefs research on AI citations proves what I suspected. News organisations make up a huge portion of the top cited domains.

Wikipedia dominates across all three major platforms. ChatGPT cites it at 16.3%, Perplexity at 12.5%, and AI Overviews at 8.4%. But look at what comes next: trusted news sources and authoritative publications.

Why? Because these sources have been fact-checked. They've gone through editorial processes. The AI can say with certain amounts of confidence that this information is real, that it's providing valuable answers.

Getting into newspapers and high authority niche publications is incredibly important. Always has been. But now it matters in ways we're only beginning to understand.

The Third-Party Citation Reality

Here's something that surprised me. Most AI citations for your brand come from third-party websites, not your own.

In Ahrefs's case, Zapier, YouTube, and Reddit are the most cited websites in AI Overviews. The same pattern applies to ChatGPT. Ahrefs's own website isn't even in the top three AI citations for their brand.

Think about that.

You can have the best content in the world on your own site. But if other people aren't talking about you, AI engines won't cite you. They're looking for consensus, for multiple sources confirming your authority.

This is classic PR territory. Building that ecosystem of mentions, that community of voices discussing your message across the web.

Building Trust in an AI-Saturated World

I've learned that trust compounds. If you can be the person, the company that gets reached out to for a particular subject from a publication, the more you appear in that publication, the more you'll be seen as an authoritative source.

Then you start picking up PR articles across other publications. You start getting cited in other places.

Get an article on BBC News and people start talking about it on social media. They write blog posts about your opinion piece. The more you can build this community around your actual message, the more an AI is likely to pick that up and see you as an authority.

It's a virtuous cycle.

But it only works if you're consistently showing up in trusted places. One placement isn't enough anymore. You need to cultivate a network of credible mentions that reinforce each other.

The Journalist Workload Crisis Creates Opportunity

Here's something most people don't realise. Journalists are drowning. Nearly 15,000 media jobs were eliminated in 2024 alone. From 1990 to 2008, about 25% of newspaper jobs vanished. Then came the Great Recession, and newsroom employment fell off a cliff, losing another 74% of the workforce through 2024.

The Washington Post is cutting one-third of all staff. They're closing sports and books departments, vastly cutting back correspondents.

Meanwhile, the workload has exploded. Journalists don't just write for the newspaper anymore. They write blogs, online articles, offline articles, social media posts. All while maintaining fact-checking and journalistic integrity.

If you're a trusted source to that journalist, they can quickly read your press release, copy and paste huge amounts of it, and move on. One article done.

This is where the "little black book" becomes invaluable.

Making sure you have courted the right journalists within the niche you're concentrating on is really important. More important than ever, actually.

How AI Changes the PR Toolkit

I can now create a really good press release using AI. I sit on a call with a client, have a note taker on, listen and record everything, then plug that entire transcript into AI to pull out a press release.

These things have become so much easier.

But here's the thing. You can't just trust a press release because AI built it off a transcript. The human in the loop is always important.

At 21 Degrees, we have a team of PR-capable people in-house. We also use third-party sources in different niches and freelancers. Just because the admin side has become easier doesn't mean the professional PR person who knows how to craft that story perfectly isn't needed.

They need to know whether the AI has hit the mark or completely missed it.

The Three Pillars of AI in PR

For me, AI use is all around three key pillars:

· Enabling you to do more - Handle multiple clients, multiple campaigns, without burning out

· Increasing quality - Use AI for deeper research, find connections, discover relevant topics and comments that support your press release

· Alleviating the boring - Admin tasks, note taking, transcribing meetings and contacts, organisational stuff

I'd recommend that PRs lean in on the admin tasks. Use AI to help with press releases if that works for you. Some PRs have written press releases their entire career and consider that their real skill set.

Fair enough.

But the key is making sure you can disseminate the information you've picked up, making sure you don't lose anything, and using AI to support your core work.

What Actually Matters Now

I'm going to be totally honest. As the CEO of 21 Degrees and a former PR myself, I've always been a bit sceptical about PR metrics.

I've seen a handful of articles, all really great, then someone relays that to a million pounds worth of advertising value. I've never bought it.

PR is still measured in potential reach and advertising value equivalent. That's not changing yet. But what's definitely happening is the value is increasing. We'll have to watch this space to see how these metrics get reported.

For me, it's all about how much extra traffic you get. How much of that traffic actually converts.

Real Results at 21 Degrees

We've pushed a massive increase in PR over the last six months. As a result, we've watched the number of times we appear in search triple.

We've also seen the quality of leads jump. We're attracting really blue chip brand names. It's felt fantastic.

Can I put this down to just PR? No. We've redoubled our marketing efforts in so many ways. But PR certainly played a huge part.

That's the kind of measurement that matters. Not theoretical reach numbers, but actual business outcomes.

The Skills That Can't Be Automated

I think truly good PRs usually have either some experience as a former journalist or have some experience of how the journalist ecosystem works.

It's very easy for someone to come out of university having been trained on PR and still not know how to do the job in any way, shape, or form. You can train as much as you want, but unless you've actually seen it, experienced that relationship building, you're missing something fundamental.

I had an incredibly organised PR professional working with me back in my agency days. She was absolutely amazing at facilitating, organising, task management. Everything was fantastic.

But she was terrified of picking up the phone and selling in a story.

She no longer works in PR. She's now a head of operations at a company, which is much more suited to her skill set.

There are types of people that can do PR and types that can't. It's not necessarily about additional training.

The Little Black Book Advantage

The true value I see with PRs is the ones that have that little black book and foster it. They've built those relationships.

That means they can sell in stuff.

Traditionally with PR, if you've got a few massive clients, you can lean on journalists to write articles for your smaller clients. Because the journalist still wants to get sources from the big companies. They have that ability to tap into that PR should they need anything for something really specific.

You end up doing favours. Putting articles in the paper or magazines that maybe on a cold call wouldn't have got anywhere near the editor's meeting. But now they're taken seriously because of that relationship.

Yes, the relationships are incredibly important. More so now than ever.

Why This Matters for Your Brand

We're watching a fundamental shift happen. Search volumes are predicted to drop by 25% by 2026 as more users turn to zero-click answers. AI chatbots are taking over how people find information.

But here's what most people miss. AI systems only cite 2-7 domains on average per response. Far fewer than Google's 10 blue links.

The top 5 domains capture 38% of citations. Top 10 secure 54%. Top 20 command 66%.

This concentration makes it extremely difficult for smaller publishers, niche sites, and emerging voices to gain AI visibility. Getting into that top tier of cited sources requires the strategic relationship building that PR professionals excel at.

You can't automate your way into trusted publications. You can't AI-generate relationships with journalists. You can't fake the kind of authority that comes from consistent, quality placements in reputable sources.

The Reality Check

Generative search tools have problems. They fabricate links. They cite syndicated and copied versions of articles. Content licensing deals with news sources provide no guarantee of accurate citation.

More than half of responses from Gemini and Grok 3 cited fabricated or broken URLs. Out of 200 prompts tested for Grok 3, 154 citations led to error pages.

This chaos underscores the need for PR's human oversight, relationship management, and quality control. AI can help with the process, but it can't replace the judgement and expertise that good PR professionals bring.

What's Next

I'm watching this space closely. We're in the early days of understanding how generative engines will shape brand visibility.

But a few things are clear:

· Third-party mentions matter more than your own content

· Trust and authority compound over time

· Relationships with journalists are becoming more valuable, not less

· AI can augment PR work but can't replace the core skills

· The little black book is the real differentiator

PR isn't just surviving in the age of AI. It's becoming essential again.

The question isn't whether PR has a future. The question is whether PR professionals will embrace AI as a tool whilst doubling down on the human skills that make them irreplaceable.

From where I'm standing, the ones who do will thrive. The ones who don't will struggle.

That's not a prediction. That's what I'm already seeing happen.