Applied Comms With AI
The practical guide for communications leaders navigating AI: notes, experiments and interviews from Michael MacLennan's own practice.
Michael MacLennan
Founder, Comms With AI
AI Communications Leader of the Year (Agency) 2026
Three to start with: the biggest test we have run, the check you can do this afternoon, and the conversation that frames the rest.
2027 planning rounds are asking comms teams to turn their AI use into savings. Stephen Waddington's answer: make the case in the three numbers management cares about, price the judgement work, and ask for budget for the new work AI creates.
Read the interview
Applied now lives on Comms With AI. All 44 pieces moved with their dates, every old address leads to the same piece, and from today every piece names the template, tool or phase it puts to work.
A paid AI visibility tracker ranked my consultancy first for a month. On the questions a buyer would ask without our name in them, AI engines named us in about one answer in nine.
A fabricated award on one web page was repeated as fact by three chatbots. Here is what AEO and GEO actually mean, what the visibility tools do and do not buy you, and a free way to find out what the engines say about your organisation.
The AI you were given finished near the bottom. 8 assistants, five comms briefs, 320 blind scores: the medal table, and how to run your own test.
33 tests of Siri AI on iOS 27, on an iPhone and a Mac: what it gets right, what it invents, the three settings to check before your team uses it.
AI systems are built on language, steered by language and increasingly speak on an organisation's behalf. That makes communication part of how the technology behaves, and hands comms a job nobody else in the building is trained for.
A lot of AI output feels generic, and one reason is that the model has no idea what your organisation has already said, approved or decided. Here is where a durable memory can live, ten practices that keep it trustworthy, and three things you can do today.
Hundreds of AI agents attacked Hugging Face without once asking a human for help. Ethan Mollick's response points at a future that needs exactly the skills comms people already have.
The problem is not that comms professionals are using AI badly. It is that most of them are using one layer of it and assuming that is all there is.
What is the communications function now for, and will communicators rebuild it before the answer is decided for them?
In conversation with Elif Güvençer
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AI's leading voices are losing the communications war because they are fighting a publicity war instead. They are spending on the message and neglecting the fundamentals.
Ask a room of communications professionals what stops them getting value from AI and you tend to hear the same one or two answers: it makes things up, or the lawyers will not allow it. Both are real. Neither is the whole picture.
The Applied Comms With AI newsletter set out to experiment in public and report back. Here's the year 1 stocktake, and where AI in comms stands.
Three months ago I documented building Comms With AI with Claude Code. On 18 June it won Gold at the inaugural AI Comms Awards, and I was named AI Communications Leader of the Year.
Most AI initiatives in communications do not fail because the tools fail. They fade because nobody owned the change. This final article in the series is about the difference between a clever pilot and a capability that lasts.
Most monitoring tells comms teams what happened after the moment to act has passed. The Monitor phase asks a sharper question: how quickly can your team detect, interpret and respond to what is happening now?
Ben Verinder has researched AI in public relations for eight years. In this Comms With AI Leader Interview, he explains why the policy gap everyone talks about sits on top of a deeper one: an honesty gap between teams, agencies and the people they serve.
In conversation with Ben Verinder
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Every efficiency gain in the Create phase lands as a workload increase in Govern. More content, produced faster, still has to be checked, approved, and stood behind. This article is about the phase where AI created the problem before it offers any of the solution.
Most AI adoption in communications starts with content creation. The real test is not whether agents can produce more, faster. It is whether agent-assisted work still meets the standard senior communicators would trust in public.
Most AI conversations in communications start with the draft. That framing misses where quality is actually set – in the research, positioning, stakeholder mapping, and message architecture that happens before a single sentence gets written.
Most teams use AI tactically. A tool here, a prompt there. The real shift is at the workflow level – and it needs a framework. This article introduces the Comms With AI 5-phase framework: five phases that map how AI-powered communications work actually operates.
Rik Turner spent 15 years helping brands win at search. Then Google AI Overviews changed the rules. In this Applied Comms With AI interview, he explains why PR teams are now central to how brands are represented in AI-generated search results – and shares a practical framework for responding.
In conversation with Rik Turner, PR for AI
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I needed a Comms with AI template library that didn't exist, so I built one. Here's the workflow – and where each AI tool hit its limits.
NOAN CEO Neal Mann explains the idea of a living fact layer, why hallucinations are structural rather than accidental, and what communications leaders need to rethink before AI can deliver real value.
In conversation with Neal Mann, CEO and co-founder, NOAN
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Build an ICP “target reader” as an AI agent to stress-test headlines, CTAs and template copy in hours – and fix clarity, proof and governance gaps fast.
Seven iterations, one recursive workflow. The behind-the-scenes account of preparing and delivering a live AI demonstration for The Data Lab – and what the process actually taught me.
This Isn't About AI Writing Better. It's About AI Removing What Stopped You Writing At All.
How I built a brand skill from scratch and produced a full campaign toolkit – speaking proposal, presentation, content calendar, outreach emails – in a single session.
I Built a Voice-Enabled AI Strategy Architect That Generates Bespoke Campaign Dashboards – Here's What Made It Possible
2026 Communications Trends: Sharper Voices Thrive as Tools Get Smarter
The AI Architect Building the Future of Communications at FleishmanHillard
AI in Crisis Comms: Help or Hindrance?
From Watson to Lovable: How Flipside's MD is Navigating the AI Revolution
Building Smarter Pitches and Smoother Approvals: How AI Can Fix PR Bottlenecks
Speed-Building an AI 'Will My Boss Hate This?' Detector, Using Lovable
Building the Perfect AI Prompt for Media Pitch Subject Lines
How Project Folders Supercharged My AI Comms Workflow (And How They’ll Transform Yours Too)
Building a LinkedIn content creator with Claude, giving Grammarly a reality check, and a (welcome) audit by ChatGPT’s Deep Research
How good is Claude at building an AI Tool for LinkedIn Content Creation?
Grammarly Review: Your Everywhere Comms AI Subeditor
We Tested ChatGPT's Deep Research Tool: Here's What Comms Professionals Need to Know
Tool Testing: Our Review Methodology
Prompt Engineering: Our Production Standards
How We Build: App Development Ground Rules
Why Applied Comms With AI? (And What to Expect)
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What is happening in comms and AI, landing Fridays, plus new articles and templates from here. No noise, no filler. Free.
