Applied Comms With AI
Notes, experiments and interviews from Michael MacLennan's own practice, each dated, and each linked to the part of the library it puts to work.
Michael MacLennan
Founder, Comms With AI
AI Communications Leader of the Year 2026
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?
Read the interviewElif Güvençer
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 Applied Comms 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.
Read the interviewBen Verinder
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 Operating System: 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 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.
Read the interviewRik Turner
PR for AI
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.
Read the interviewNeal Mann
CEO and co-founder, NOAN
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.
How agentic AI turned Google’s Gemini 3 Pro hackathon experiment into a functional and innovative strategy tool for under-resourced charities.
It’s the year when communicators should loudly and proudly articulate that their value isn’t in producing content – it’s in making sense of the world.
AI expertise isn't about being technically gifted – it's about understanding systems and workflows.
Read the interviewJoyce Higgins
FleishmanHillard
"The key is preparation. Use AI now to understand its capabilities and limitations. Build your prompts library when you're calm. Test on low-stakes issues. Because when a real crisis hits, you don't want to be experimenting – you want proven tools and workflows ready to deploy." - Amanda Coleman
Flipside's Barney Evison and his digital agency team have spent the past few years turning AI wonder into practical applications – and learning some hard truths along the way.
Read the interviewBarney Evison
Flipside
AI tools built, pitches perfected, approvals fast-tracked: discover how smarter workflows are transforming PR and comms right now.
The real revelation isn't the tool itself - it's that a comms professional with no coding experience can build something this functional in three hours. The barriers between "I wish this existed" and "I built this" are crumbling.
Agonising over subject lines? Our AI prompt thinks like a journalist – asking the right questions and generating newsworthy subject lines without PR clichés.
How organised AI workspaces transformed my communications workflow (and why you should steal this approach).
In this edition, we dive headfirst into Claude's code-free Artefact app builder to see if we can build a proper LinkedIn content creation tool. Plus, a reality check on whether Grammarly's AI features actually help comms pros, and how ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature may save you hours of time.
I made the most of Claude’s latest app-building capabilities to create a tool that aims to offer several leading LinkedIn posting approaches as part of a structured, AI-powered workflow designed to save time and enhance engagement.
We tested Grammarly for 18 months across real client work: emails, proposals, newsletters. Is it the AI safety net every comms pro needs?
We put ChatGPT's new Deep Research feature through its paces with a real comms challenge. The results? Not perfect, but more than strong enough to prove its worth in certain situations.
The communications world is drowning in AI tool recommendations – most written by people who've never used them. Our approach is different.
Prompt engineering involves learning to ask AI systems effective questions. Our approach focuses on what works for communications professionals.
When we build AI tools for communications, we're not trying to create the next unicorn startup. We're solving real problems that comms professionals face every day.
I'm here to experiment, fail, learn, and share everything along the way. Think of this as your comms insider's guide to figuring out AI together.
Nothing in this combination yet.
What is happening in comms and AI, every other Friday, plus new articles and templates from here. No noise, no filler. Free.