AI changes everything, but not for the reasons you think
AI is transforming the world of corporate communications. It is both a consumer and creator of content. So, what does this mean for the channels we manage?
Isn’t it remarkable how AI has become part of our lives? From smart speakers to shopping site chatbots, we interact with AI everywhere. And for corporate communication professionals like you and me, AI has made its entrance with confidence. At Gather, we employ AI to research our clients and their peers, delving deeply into their corporate content and narrative reporting. We then utilise AI to analyse this research, allowing us to spend less time identifying the problem and more time resolving it. We also harness AI to turn those insights into initial content strategies and jump-start potential creative solutions.
Throughout this process, we learn that adopting AI responsibly requires clear thinking. The tool needs us to precisely define our objectives, prompting us to ask ourselves, “What exactly is it that I want to discover? What is the ‘real’ question here?” It also involves breaking down specific, narrow tasks needed to achieve those goals: “How do I get there? What are the building blocks?” Providing rich context in the prompts becomes essential, demonstrating that using AI is an iterative process where we experiment and refine the prompts to see how they influence the responses. This encourages us to ask, “Hmm, why did the answer change? What is the bias, and how is it significant?” In all this, it is essential to remain critical, trusting our instincts on what feels right and rejecting what does not, taking the time to build a complete answer or solution layer by layer.
During Summer 2024, Google introduced AI-generated summaries for web search queries. This is changing people’s behaviour: we are no longer just seeking information; we are consuming knowledge. Previously, Google would have presented us with a list of websites to explore to find the answer to our question, but now AI does that for us. It scans the websites, collects the necessary information, and delivers a fully formed answer. We might never need to visit those websites.
And it isn’t just web searches. In June 2025, the FRC published its Guidance on adopting AI to audit annual reports. Indeed, for those who need to review many of these documents—yes, I’m looking at you, analysts and rating agencies—AI becomes the essential tool to review and assess at speed, with a lower risk of missing something than the human eye or a tired mind. In the same month, a BBC news article by technology correspondent Thomas Germain suggested that soon, the primary audience for digital communication will no longer be human, but synthetic.
So, if you want people to understand your story, you need AI to understand it first, because people won’t hear it from your channel, but from AI. This might require a complete overhaul of your corporate communications… But here’s the thing: in the context of corporate comms, AI behaves like people.
“Here's the thing: in the context of corporate comms, AI behaves like people”
Like people, AI requires your corporate communication to be clear. The information should focus on a single idea or proposition that can, and should, be easily understood. AI, like you and me, tends to prioritise what comes first, is most prominent, or is on the surface.
Headlines, standfirsts, pullouts, and information graphics are now more critical than ever. Break down complex information into smaller, digestible paragraphs, lists, and tables.
Consistency and connectivity both within and across channels remain crucial. AI shares a very human trait of becoming confused by conflicting messages. When detecting a theme here and another elsewhere, AI is compelled to choose between them or merge them into a fictional third. AI looks for reinforcements and redundancies. Don’t be afraid to make the same point over and over; if you only mention something once, even if early in your story, AI will think it’s ultimately irrelevant and dismiss it. The importance of a “golden thread” across your corporate communication ecosystem has never been more acute.
We have yet to see the full impact of AI on corporate communications; the technology develops quickly. However, the basics of good corporate communication stay the same.
Get in touch
If you’d like to discuss this, or any other subject, please get in touch with Richard Costa, Consultancy Director, at richardc@gather.london
We’d love to know what you think.