Kidnapping Companies’ PR

If you are a company that values your public image, especially when your brand image and value depends on it, this is an important post for you. With the proliferation of Generative Models, like ChatGPT and Midjourney/StableDiffusion, it has become very easy for bad actors to generate news that can harm big companies public images and reputation.

CEOs of these large companies need to prepare their PR on the possibility that fake news (with seemingly real images) dealing a devastating impact and possible over a long period of time. Still remember the image of the Pope wearing a white down jacket, and fake Pentagon explosion photos. Companies that do not start preparing and provide the necessary tools and training to their PR might be in for a very rough ride.

I hope to keep the newsletter open to as many as possible. :) If you have benefited much from my posts and will like to join my cause, consider making a “book" donation. Link at the bottom of the newsletter or here. :)

How to prepare? Your company track record is going to be very important. The long track record among existing clients will be the ‘vaccine’ that is needed against these fake news. The longer the track record the better, the better and well communicated the track record the better it is as well. The track record will help existing clients to at least start being critical about these fake news, asking “Are you sure?” on news that seemingly does not tie in very well with the track record.

What this means is that consistency in PR messaging and acknowledging and the speed of it on mistakes made is important as well. To counter the content generation speed of bad actors, PR personnel should also be trained and have accessed to these generative models as well, to understand their strengths, weaknesses and the necessary prompt template needed to generate counter-content quickly.

To summarize, I feel a companies need to start preparing for a long, hard-fought and never-ending PR war if companies values their brand and reputation, especially among their existing clients and customers. Else their reputation and image may just be facing an onslaught of “PR attacks” going forward.

What are your thought and comments? Do share them in the comments below.

Recommended Content

I shared another business-related posts over here where I am advocating for a Data & AI representative in the Board of Directors <Post>

Another business-related posts is how should companies go about to build Data Science and AI capabilities <Post>