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  ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI

  Aug 31, 202621 min

  Some advisers are telling agency owners they don’t need to know AI all that well themselves. They suggest owners go deep on AI for a month or three, then pass the day-to-day to the team and move on with life. In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why that’s backwards, and how owners who step back from AI are making a mistake. Chip’s argument is that AI doesn’t fit the usual delegation model because it’s moving too fast and touching too much of the business to hand off after just a few months of study. Gini agrees, noting that advice which made sense six months ago is often stale today. Both connect this to credibility with the team: Chip compares the situation to a non-technical manager overseeing developers, who then gets disrespected because they don’t speak the language. Gini says her own coaching works because she’s in the tools constantly enough to give specific workable advice. They also describe pushing AI into something closer to a personal operating system than a work tool, from Chip wanting an assistant that catches him contradicting his own past positions, to Gini’s agent that calls her out when she takes on work she said she’d delegate, telling her flatly it’s not the best use of her time. The episode closes with the advice that staying curious personally is what keeps owners sharp enough to lead a team through a tool that keeps rewriting its own rules. [ read the transcript ] The post ALP 314: Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI appeared first on FIR Podcast Network .

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  The FIR Podcast Network Everything Feed

  Circle of Fellows #132: AI and the Communication Leadership Moment

  Aug 28, 202657 min

  Episode 132 of IABC’s Circle of Fellows examines what the newly released Reimagining Tomorrow 2026 report from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management means for the profession. The report surveyed 536 communication professionals across six global regions and found a profession that has embraced AI in practice but not yet claimed AI governance in leadership: 95.9% of organizations now permit AI, yet only 8.6% have communication professionals leading the formal governance structure. One in four organizations discloses AI use to no one at all. Joining moderator Shel Holtz are Bonnie Caver and Adrian Cropley OAM, both Global Alliance board directors and the research partners behind the survey, as well as Mike Klein. (Theomary Karamanis was scheduled to be a panelist but laryngitis prevented her from participating.) Together, they dig into what the data means for the profession, what it will take to move from adoption to accountability, and what it takes to be a leader in the AI era. Links from this episode: The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management Reimagining Tomorrow 2026: The Report About the panel Bonnie Caver , SCMP, is the Founder and CEO of Reputation Lighthouse, a global change management and reputation consultancy with offices in Denver, Colorado, and Austin, Texas. The firm, which is 20 years old, focuses on leading companies to create, accelerate, and protect their corporate value. She has achieved the highest professional certification for a communication professional, the Strategic Communication Management Professional (SCMP), a distinction at the ANSI/ISO level. She is also a certified strategic change management professional (Kellogg School of Management), a certified crisis manager (Institute of Crisis Management). She holds an advanced certification for reputation through the Reputation Institute (now the RepTrak Company). She is a past chair of the global executive board for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). She currently serves on the board of directors for the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, where she leads the North American Regional Council and is the New Technology Responsibility/AI Director. Caver is the Vice Chair for the Global Communication Certification Council (GCCC) and leads the IABC Change Management Special Interest Group, which has more than 1,300 members. In addition, she is heavily involved in the global conversation around ethical and responsible AI implementation and led the Global Alliance’s efforts in creating Ethical and Responsible AI Guidelines for the global profession. Adrian Cropley is the founder and director of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, a global training and development organization. For over thirty years, Adrian has worked with clients worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, on major change communication initiatives, internal communication reviews and strategies, professional development programs, and executive leadership and coaching. He is a non-executive director on several boards and advises some of the top CEOs and executives globally. Adrian is a past global chair of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), where he implemented the IABC Career Road Map, kick-started a global ISO certification for the profession, and developed the IABC Academy. Adrian pioneered the Melcrum Internal Communication Black Belt program in Asia Pacific and is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, and thought leader. He has been a keynote speaker and workshop leader on strategic and change communication at international conferences in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. He has received numerous awards, including IABC Gold Quill Awards for communication excellence, and his Agency received Boutique Agency of the Year 6 years running. Adrian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Committee for the RMIT School of Media and Communication and a Fellow of the IABC and RSA. In 2017, he was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for his contribution to the field of communication. Mike Klein is the Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine, Founder of #WeLeadComms , and a communication consultant specializing in internal and social communication based in Reykjavik, Iceland. A former US political consultant, Mike shifted direction toward internal communication while pursuing his MBA at London Business School. Since then, Mike has been one of the leading voices for empowering communication professionals, and advocating a focus on internal influence and social connection as drivers of communication, integration and performance. His 2011 book, From Lincoln to LinkedIn remains relevant as organizations recognize that personal credibility and connection are critical to communication success in a world where content volumes are increasing and instability flourishes. Raised in Chicago, Mike has lived and worked in seven different countries, and is also a Fellow of the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence and the Institute of Internal Communication. Raw transcript And we are live. Hi everybody, and welcome to Circle of Fellows. Uh, I am Shel Holtz. I am an IABC fellow. I am here with, uh, three of my IABC fellow colleagues, and we are going to talk about, uh, the leadership moment in artificial intelligence for the communication community. This is the first of two episodes where we will focus on this topic. This is based on the results of a survey that was conducted by the Global Alliance. Uh, both Bonnie and Adrian are heavily involved with the Global Alliance, and I’ll let them tell you how, uh, as we go around the horn and do introductions. Uh, before we get into that, though, I do wanna let everyone know that we hope that you will participate in this conversation by sharing your questions, your observations, your thoughts in the YouTube chat. I can see them right here in this sidebar panel, and we’ll share them on the screen, and we can bring you into the conversation that way. Uh, so let’s do introductions. We’ll go around, uh, clockwise in the order I see you. Uh, and that means we’re starting with you, Adrian. Thanks for that, Shel. It’s always good to be on the Circle of Fellows. Um, I’m Adrian Cropley. I am the co-founder of the Center for Strategic Communication based in Melbourne, Australia, past IABC chair, and now, uh, director on the board of the Global Alliance, and fortunately, um, a partner in the research. Bonnie has- Bonnie and I have done this now for the last couple of years with the, the Global Alliance, so it’s great to be on here sharing a little bit around that, uh, what it’s telling us about that leadership moment. Terrific. Glad to have you with us, Adrian. Bonnie, you’re up. Hi, I’m Bonnie Caver, and I am in Austin, Texas, and I run a company called Reputation Lighthouse, and that’s my day job. Um, of course, I’ve been involved with IABC a long time, and am the past chair of the Global Communication Certification Council and sat on the board of the Global Alliance where, for the last, uh, three years, I’ve been focused on responsible AI and the way our global profession looks at responsible AI. So anytime we have an opportunity to talk about that, uh, it’s very helpful to me as we’re moving forward to Abuja and the World PR Forum, and we’ll be updating the responsible AI guidelines for our profession. Excellent. Looking forward to seeing the outcome of that initiative. And Mike? Hello there. I’m Mike Klein, and I am an IABC fellow. I am also editor-in-chief of Strategic Magazine, which publishes daily content for communication leaders worldwide. And also, I have my own consultancy focused on internal communication and organizational strategy. And my AI bent is less about responsible use of AI and more about strategic use of AI and our strategic positioning within the AI ecosystem, um, with an, with a particular focus on the second-order effects of AI use in organization worldwide Great. And some of you watching this may have seen the promotional materials that went out announcing that this was going to be happening and saw that Thea-Mari Karamalis was also going to be on the panel. Uh, we miss her. Uh, we were looking forward to seeing her here as well, but she let us know the day before yesterday that she has come down with laryngitis. So I, I suppose she could still be here, she just couldn’t say anything. Uh, so she’s opted to take it easy, and we hope that she recovers well and look forward to having her on a future, uh, installment of Circle of Fellows. So let’s jump into this. We have talked about artificial intelligence on Circle of Fellows a couple of times. It’s hard to avoid the topic. If you spend any time on LinkedIn at all, I swear half of the posts there have something to do with AI. I have started following somebody who is talking just about AI in the construction industry on, uh, on LinkedIn. Uh, she posts some really good stuff. She’s not selling anything other than her own consulting services, so, uh, she’s talking about what different companies are doing, and it’s, it’s, it’s really fascinating out there. Um, I personally subscribe to, I think, 12, uh, different AI newsletters, uh, that come by email. And I use AI to summarize all of those because I can’t possibly read 12 daily email newsletters. Uh, but we wanna sort of look at this from more of a, a 40,000 foot, uh, perspective as opposed to the nitty-gritty applications of AI in communication. What does this mean for communication leadership within organizations, uh, and within the communication profession? So, uh, the survey that was conducted by the Global Alliance, uh, I believe, if I remember correctly, I don’t have it in, up in front of me, but I think it was 600 responses or so. Um, so it was a, a, a pretty good representation, a global representation of, of how this is being used. The report, uh, does slice and dice the data so you can see how it all shakes out regionally, for example. But there were some interesting results. Let me just share a couple of, uh, the data points, uh, here. Um, 95.9% of organizations now permit their employees to use AI. That’s up from 91% last year, so incremental growth. Most organizations are letting everybody use it, but only 8.6 of organizations have communication professionals leading formal AI governance. And one in four organizations, uh, specifically 25.4%, um, discloses AI use to no one. There is no disclosure at all. Uh, disclosure is one of my favorite topics because I don’t think it’s an either/or question. But, uh, that’s Interesting data that’s out there. I’ve seen other data from other surveys. We just did one where I work, uh, so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got that perspective floating around in my head since I joined this call on the heels of a call with my company’s AI committee. So what does that data tell us? Let’s, let’s look at this from, from a governance perspective. What’s missing, uh, when only 8%, 8.6% of us are, are, are leading governance? Uh I, I mean, I presume that somebody’s leading governance in, in these organizations. So what do companies lose when, when communication isn’t engaged? It’s, you know, it’s a really interesting one. I, I might jump in and, and talk about this one first, ’cause when we looked at the, the survey, it, it, it was kind of a worrying statistic because this, this year’s survey, it’s now the second year that this particular survey has been running. So Bonnie and I have, have kind of led that with the Global Alliance. It means now we’ve got that comparative data. Governance really hasn’t shifted in the, the last two years. We can ask a question around what involvement should communication professionals have in governance, should we be leading it, is probably the, the key question there. But if we’re not leading it, are we, are we part of that? Um, so for instance, one of the, the statistics in the, the survey was 57.3% of us are involved in shaping responsible AI guidelines. Um, but only 13.9 are actually leading in that work as well. So it- it’s part of that government s- governance frame, but it’s quite low in the numbers. Now, I guess there’s, there really is that debate around where we should be positioned as communication professionals and there’s, there’s lots of people that say we really shouldn’t be leading it, it should be dedicated AI, um, executives, um, that have a department that looks at, at AI, and I’m, I’m all for that. I think that’s great. But at the absolute minimum, we have a big role in being part of that conversation, and certainly leading it in areas that support communication within the organization. Um, and I might come back to this later, but the, the latest changes within Claude, for instance, is a reaction to… And, and, and what those changes are is, is digital watermarks saying how much of, uh, AI is, is being used, and it automatically discloses for, for us. We’ll talk about disclosure a little bit later, but it’s worrying that decisions are being made without the understanding of the context of communication and, and our input because it’s not black and white, we used AI or we didn’t, it’s to what degree and how much is the human in the loop. And, and, and, and I’m sure Bonnie will talk a lot more about, um, about the, uh, uh, responsible AI and, and the importance of, of that role. But I think we’re in, we’re in a, a place where we actually need to be starting to be part of that conversation, if not leading in that con- that, that area of governance, ’cause it’s a really good role to be given AI is used in content development right across organizations. I was just gonna add in here that, that really and truly where this governance is coming and where it, it impacts us is in that connection to reputation. And because of the way that we are working as organizations, how we’re governing, uh, it, it increases our risk, uh, exposure. Every time we are hiding something is, or it appears that we’re hiding something because we’re not transparent, we’re not dis- dis- disclosing, uh, when people have questions about how we’re using AI, when there’s any sort of doubt, uh, around, of course, we’ve got all of the AI slop. When we don’t have governance, um, it goes to the patterns that are looked at, um, for our organization and how w- it’s, it’s impacting our reputation. And if you look across the board, um, you know, I, I’ve been in the reputation business for a long time. My, my company is, is, uh, 20-plus years old, and we’ve been talking about reputation for a long time. But it’s interesting to me how many comms departments and how many jobs now say reputation is important, how many, um, organizations are talking about it, how many agencies are talking about it. It’s like reputation is the new buzzword, and part of it is because of this lack of AI governance and the ethical challenges and how we’re not communicating that, and we’re not communicating appropriately, uh, and transparently to our stakeholders, and it’s causing, um, reputational risk Mike, any thoughts? I think the, I think the challenge of, of looking at, uh, uh, I think the challenge of looking at AI, you know, uh, this from a reputational lens is that reputation is hugely important. A huge chunk of a company’s value is based, you know, particularly most of a, a company’s intangible value is based on its reputation. But reputation is a fundamentally defensive discipline, and governance is a fundamentally defensive discipline. And the opportunity that communication leaders have isn’t just simply about leading the defense, it’s also about guiding the offense. It’s about finding the opportunities and seeing beyond the, the, the, the current set of risks. Um, AI isn’t just simply making it easier for people to produce on s- you know, produce content without supervision. AI is also transforming the way people work in organizations, and what organizations fundamentally do and how they do that. And as important as AI rep- you know, as AI governance is, it’s also very intense. It’s very time-consuming, and we could very easily find ourselves sidetracked from even these even bigger opportunities on, you know, on the other side of the organization. Mike, I’d like to just talk about that. I th- I love that you say that reputation is defensive, because I’ve just written a whole book about the fact that it’s not. And everything here is about how- Okay. We’re gonna have some flak Here’s some opportunity r- right, to move it from being defensive to how you do things right and take advantage of the opportunities to differentiate yourself and to differentiate yourself from a reputational perspective, how you create reputational currency. And this is an incredible opportunity to do that. While we’re looking at the risk, um, certainly I 100% agree with you. Let’s switch it and let’s look at where the opportunities are for our leadership and, and really reputation should be embedded in those things that we do, um, in, uh, as a daily basis. And so how do we begin to look at it from that perspective and take advantage? I totally agree with you. Um, it’s time to look at the positive and how we lead on a positive level versus being in this total defense mode. And I think there’s, there’s- It’s interesting- If we look at the role of communication professionals o- over years, we, we love a good defense. We love to get involved when the crisis has happened. We love to get involved when, when issues need to be managed within the organization. So do we automatically put ourselves in the defensive role? Is it time now to start looking at being the proactive role and, and, and the attack role, as, as you said, Mike, which I, I totally agree with, is we need to look at our time. So are we saying that things like governance reputation is time-consuming, and it will become even more time-consuming the more we fall off these cliffs because there is not governance and there’s not order in place when it comes to AI, or it’s being defined for us around how we use AI within the organization. So I think there’s… I think it’s actually about turning it into, as Bonnie was saying, the positive of here is the opportunity now for us to step up. Because if we stay in content creation mode and tool mode and, and learning those tools without stepping into a much more leadership role, then I think we’re missing a huge opportunity. One of the things that Bonnie mentioned that I wanted to come back to was the idea that reputation should be embedded in what people are doing and what organizations are doing. I agree that it should be embedded rather than being, you know, a parallel measurement. One of the big problems that we have in the realm of communication, it’s not just around reputation, it’s also particularly strong around employee engagement, putting my own book on as it happens. And we often look at measurement of reputation and measurement of- employee engagement as parallel metrics to organizational performance. And Bonnie is dead right about saying these are embedded, these are part of the picture. Um, we need to think about

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  Episode #6

  OTSP #6: One Size Fits Nobody — A Better Way to Communicate Employee News

  Aug 25, 202623 min

  Communicating news to employees used to be a straightforward proposition: Publish the company newspaper or magazine, and give everyone the same information at the same time. Today, communicators can target news by audience, location, channel, source, and relevance. But the greater challenge is deciding what qualifies as news and what you hope employees will think, feel, or do after receiving it. In this episode of “On The Same Page,” Shel Holtz and Mark Dollins discuss why employee news cannot be one-size-fits-all — or a one-and-done — and explore the importance of timing, sequencing, trusted voices, employee influence networks, and planning for what happens after the announcement. Raw transcript: Shel Holtz: So, Mark, I don’t know about you, but when I got into this business, communicating news to employees was what employee communication was all about. Was that true for you? Mark Dollins: Yes, exactly right. Often, it was one size fits all: Hit that button, and now everybody knows. It was really simple. Shel Holtz: My first job was with an energy company, ARCO, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was acquired by British Petroleum after I left. An interesting story: One of the people I knew who was still there—Dave Orman, who ran the department—said someone at BP who had been with another company it acquired asked whether he knew how to pronounce his company’s name. I think it was Amoco. Dave said, “No, how do you pronounce it?” He replied, “BP. The Amoco is silent.” Mark Dollins: Clever. I like it. Shel Holtz: Just to give you a heads-up about what it was going to be like. We had a newspaper. Sometimes it was eight pages; sometimes it was 16. Every Friday, it was delivered to all 55,000 employees in the company. Everybody got the news, and everybody got the same news. Today, there are organizations doing internal communication that don’t actually have a news vehicle. They don’t communicate the news. They’ve shifted entirely to a proactive, strategic approach to communication. Mark Dollins: We may have been separated at birth, because my first corporate job was also with an energy company. Our communication to employees was a monthly magazine—anywhere from 32 to 38 pages. To your point, everybody got exactly the same news and information at the same time. There really wasn’t a sense of urgency. Communicating news meant communicating what we decided was news employees needed to know, when we decided they needed to know it. Things have changed considerably with the advent of social media and immediate communication. Of course, there also used to be a wall between internal and external communication. You could get away with some things. That’s not possible anymore. That wall is invisible. Shel Holtz: I remember when I was at ARCO, Dave brought Roger D’Aprix in to speak to us. I believe he was with Xerox at the time. Roger was pushing this whole notion of proactive communication: You communicate to prepare employees for what’s coming, ensure they are aligned, and make sure they know what they need to know to understand and support whatever is about to happen. Everybody on the ARCO staff, with the exception of the graphic designers, had a daily newspaper background. We were all newspaper reporters. That was what they wanted—people who could report the news. There was pushback against what Roger said: “You mean we’re not going to report when the Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminus station blows up and kills three employees?” You do need to report that, but you also need to be proactive. Today, though, let’s talk about news. Mark Dollins: Indeed. How we communicate news today is critical. While one size doesn’t fit all in communicating news, I believe it is important to apply a strategic filter when deciding how to report it. Shel Holtz: Do you want to report absolutely everything that goes on? Even in public journalism, you don’t report everything that happens. There are editorial decisions. What is news? Mark Dollins: That’s the most basic question: What is news? What makes people interested? What is going to produce an “Aha!” rather than a “Ho-hum, I’m not interested”? Shel Holtz: Of course, news in an organizational or internal communication context is not necessarily defined the same way it would be at the Los Angeles Times or The Wall Street Journal. Mark Dollins: Remember all the filters you were supposed to apply in journalism school—proximity, timeliness, relevance, and so forth? Some are applicable here, and some less so. For global companies, proximity may not be geographic. The connection may be that my company’s name is involved. That gives it some relevance. Shel Holtz: But what’s relevant to an employee in Paris working in sales is not necessarily relevant to an employee in Peoria working in a manufacturing facility. When we started—with your monthly magazine and my weekly newspaper—the technology limited what we could do to tailor the news to different audiences. Today, that is drop-dead easy. Mark Dollins: Exactly. We can repackage and repurpose it for the channel we choose. Shel Holtz: You can deliver news to the people who will be interested in it or whose jobs will be affected by it, without bothering somebody who is going to look at it and say, “Why are they sending this to me? This has nothing to do with me.” Mark Dollins: When you’re faced with a “news item” for your organization, what filters do you run it through? How do you decide whether and how to treat it strategically? Shel Holtz: We have established employee profiles. I had wanted to create profiles forever, but we didn’t have the resources or time to do it right. Then I attended a conference where Andrea Greenhous was speaking. I think you were at the same conference—the PRSA Internal Communications Conference in Atlanta. Andrea talked about three profiles she uses: hard to convince, hard to reach, and everyone else. I expanded on that. I think we have five profiles based on those three. That’s one filter we use: Is this someone we really need to convince, or someone who merely needs to be aware? Another filter is what the news reinforces. We tell stories that reinforce our core values. We have six core values, which I think I could actually name if I were pressed. We have a strategic plan with four planks, and we have a purpose statement that expresses our higher calling. Through our storytelling and news reporting, we try to reinforce those things. We tell stories demonstrating that we are true to our values and that we are making decisions consistent with the planks of the strategic plan. Mark Dollins: And consistent with your earlier point, your purpose. That’s where many organizations miss the boat. Even when they have legitimate good news—“We’re launching a new product” or “We’re acquiring this company”—they explain the mechanics of how it will work but miss the opportunity to say, “This is how it supports our purpose, our whole reason for being.” If it connects to a specific strategy, explain that: “We’ve said we’re going to expand into these adjacencies as a strategic priority for the next three or four years. Look at how this action accomplishes that.” Sometimes, when you dig just below the news, you wonder why anybody would care, because no connection has been made to the organization’s purpose, mission, or strategy. As internal communicators, we have to think about the application and relevance to stakeholders. Shel Holtz: Obviously, there will be news stories without a clear connection to one of those things, but they’re so big that you must communicate them anyway. Before we started recording, we were talking about announcing a new CEO. That may happen because your succession plan has kicked in and the existing CEO is retiring. It could also happen because the CEO dropped dead of a heart attack or was removed by the board under questionable circumstances. Mark Dollins: This ties to what we discussed on our last podcast about change and change management. The way we treat news cannot be one and done. We have to consider the impacts: What’s the aftermath? A new CEO could signal an entirely new direction for the executive leadership team and other high-priority areas of the company. If you’re going to announce the news, you need to think about whether something else should follow immediately or fairly quickly. “How do we communicate the news?” is the easy question, in my opinion. You decide whether it is news and then determine how to get it to the appropriate internal stakeholders. But if we’re not asking, “And then what?” we’re going to miss a significant opportunity, especially with bigger news items such as a new CEO, a major acquisition, or something signaling a seismic change in the direction of the company or industry. It isn’t simply, “How do we communicate the news?” It’s, “How do we communicate the news, and what happens afterward?” Shel Holtz: Exactly. This is one of the challenges with hiring newspaper reporters to become internal communicators. In public journalism, you communicate something because it happened and is relevant to people who live in the area. That doesn’t fly in internal communication. You have to consider what you want from employees after they become aware of the news. Ed Robertson at FedEx developed a model with a horrible name: the Pyramid of Communication Quality. Mark Dollins: Rolls off the tongue. Shel Holtz: It sounds like something from a 1940s textbook, but it’s based loosely on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He said most executives—and the communicators they hire—think they can start at the top of the pyramid: “What do you want me to do as a result of reading this?” But you have to move through several steps first. The communication must satisfy logistical requirements. A good example of a logistical failure would be: “Yes, we sent you the news. The news was about a change in benefits providers, and we got it to you a week after the benefits-enrollment deadline.” Mark Dollins: Gee, thanks. Shel Holtz: After satisfying the logistical requirements, the communication has to capture your attention. What captures the attention of someone who goes down into a mine will differ from what captures the attention of someone sitting in a boardroom. Once it has your attention, you ask, “What does this have to do with me? Why should I pay attention? Do things improve for me as a result?” Only after satisfying those requirements can you get to, “What do you want me to think, believe, or do?” Mark Dollins: Your example of communicating benefits changes after they’ve already been implemented also raises the issue of timing and sequencing. Sometimes there are advantages to carefully sequencing how you communicate news. I recently had a conversation with a dear friend about a major symphony orchestra in this country that decided earlier this year not to renew its conductor’s contract. The board of directors and CEO certainly have the right and responsibility to make that decision. But it appears the news wasn’t communicated to internal stakeholders—namely, the orchestra’s musicians—with much thought. The musicians learned their conductor would not be returning at the same time the press release went out to everybody else. The problem was that the musicians liked this person. They got behind him and mounted a campaign to save his job. When I saw them recently, they were wearing red carnations. I asked what that was about, and my friend explained the situation. They are all members of the musicians’ union, so they can organize and communicate in a coordinated way. It also appears insufficient thought was given to what the outgoing conductor could say or do. He took advantage of that and communicated some things on his own. When internal communicators are brought to the table, we may receive the press release, but we need to ask about the implications for internal stakeholders. What are the rules of engagement for the outgoing conductor regarding what and how he can communicate? When is the announcement going out? Who is being notified, and when? What can we offer to help make the process go more smoothly for everyone, including the musicians who clearly care about this person? Communicating the news is a simple concept. But if we don’t consider the aftermath and its impact, we may create our own problems. Shel Holtz: They didn’t do the incoming conductor any favors either, did they? Mark Dollins: Good luck finding someone who wants to walk into that situation. That’s going to be a challenge. Shel Holtz: This gets to the argument I keep hearing that there is no longer a distinction between internal and external communication because the lines have blurred. The argument goes: You send out the press release, it gets published, and everybody reads the same thing. Why do we need to communicate separately? The musicians’ response speaks directly to that. This is exactly why you do need to communicate separately. Roger D’Aprix refers to employees as “informed insiders,” and that’s why you need to treat them differently. Mark Dollins: We’ve seen the rise of employee activism. Employees get behind an issue or topic—rightly so in many cases—and suddenly they aren’t merely complaining to their bosses. You may have a shareholder proposal authored by employee activists. Thinking about the aftermath of news and how we communicate it isn’t merely a nice thing to do. It’s a central and important responsibility. Shel Holtz: Or you could have 20,000 employees walk out. That’s another possibility. Mark Dollins: There’s that. There is also talk of a strike in the situation I mentioned. Shel Holtz: Really? There was certainly the case of Wayfair, which was selling furniture to ICE detention facilities. That led employees to revolt. Then there was Google, where 20,000 employees walked out in a coordinated labor action. Google fired the communicator who helped organize all of that. She now has a book about the experience. Mark Dollins: I’m guessing she’s making more money from that than she did in her former job. Shel Holtz: That may be true, but I’m not sure firing her had the positive impact Google thought it would. Mark Dollins: We should also think about whether there are champions we need to engage or pre-engage to help communicate the news. That’s a change-management concept. It isn’t just about the press release or the announcement in the internal house organ. If this is big or significant news, let’s give it appropriate attention and equip the right people to help deliver the message in ways a digital or printed document can’t. That includes providing context, conveying emotion, and engaging people. It’s a far more effective way of showing that we care about how the organization responds to and engages with the news than simply saying, “Here it is. Talk to you later.” Shel Holtz: I know organizations that have mapped their influence networks and tap into the appropriate network for each type of communication. Mark Dollins: Smart. And don’t forget the derailers. We need to know both ends of the spectrum: Who is going to help us, and who is likely to become the voice of the opposition? Perhaps we can bring those opponents around to a different way of thinking. Shel Holtz: Another drawback of the transition from newspaper reporter to internal communicator is the tendency to think every article—and all the news we share—must be a work of journalism. That was all there was for us before. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore. We have multiple channels and multiple ways to distribute information. Mark Dollins: Those channels are designed to handle information differently. Some can accommodate a boatload of material. Others give you only a limited number of characters, with the option to dive deeper elsewhere. That’s the beauty of much of the digital communication we do. It isn’t one size fits all in terms of either the end user or the channels we use to reach them. Shel Holtz: Some of it can be visual. I can tell a story with a photo and a caption and not need anything else, if the story can be contained there. The other question is: Who is telling the story? I recently saw data—it may have been from Gallagher or Poppulo—indicating that people decide which news they’ll pay attention to based on who sent it. Was it the CEO? Was it their manager? Was it the internal communication team? When you advise clients, is the source of the news a consideration? Mark Dollins: Of course. Whose voice matters? If you’re going to use the CEO’s voice, it ought to be a pretty important piece of news. Otherwise, you misuse the CEO’s voice, and over time nobody pays attention because it has been overleveraged. In other cases, a subject-matter expert with credibility—or even a third party—may be a great way to get people to pay attention. Employees may think, “I haven’t heard from this person in a while,” “This is a pretty senior person,” or “This person has a great deal of expertise in this area, so I’m going to pay more attention.” Again, it’s situational. It requires us to think—that’s what we’re paid to do. We must consider whose voice matters and how stakeholders will react. That’s still not one size fits all. One voice may work well in one part of the organization or for a particular type of message. In other circumstances, a second or even third voice can add credibility and acceptance. For relatively minor news, one voice may be plenty. But for something bigger, perhaps you have analysts discuss the power of combining your company with another company. Now you’re adding credibility based on the voices you choose to help share the news and the story surrounding it. Shel Holtz: I know organizations that overcompensate for this, too. Back in my consulting days, I had a client that never wrote a news article. It didn’t have a vehicle for communicating news. Everything came from an executive, and the communication team ghostwrote all of it. I asked, “Really? You don’t have a voice of the company you can use to share basic, ground-level news?” No. Everything came from an executive. Mark Dollins: That’s unfortunate. We talk about brand personality and all the components that make a company a brand and a brand a company. Those are opportunities to leverage the company’s voice without necessarily attaching a human being to it. Again, it’s situational. We have to be thoughtful about it. Shel Holtz: I want to return to targeting for a minute. Not only can we get relevant news into the hands of the people for whom it matters, but we can also get hyperlocal with it. I’m a big fan of Jeff Jarvis. I read his book about what the news industry needs to do to become relevant and profitable, and I think he’s spot-on. He says that if you want the news to be relevant to me, don’t tell me only what’s happening in my city. Tell me what’s happening on my block. I want to know whether there is a road closure that will keep me from getting to work. I live about two miles from the Concord Pavilion, a large performing-arts venue. Our main thoroughfare, Ygnacio Valley Road, is frequently backed up because of concerts. Tell me that this road, which is two-and-a-half blocks from my house, will be backed up from 1 p.m. until midnight. Mark Dollins: Exactly. I may need a loaf of bread and some milk, and I don’t want to spend an hour and a half getting them. Do your part as a good community neighbor and tell me the news that affects me. Shel Holtz: We have the ability to extract that information. AI can help us automate the process to some extent and get local information to the people who need it. We could talk about news all day, but we’ve been at this for a while, so let’s wrap it up. Any last thoughts, Mark? Mark Dollins: Being strategic in how we communicate news is a critical component of any employee communicator’s role. It isn’t one size fits all. We should use the tools available to make news hyperlocal, present it in the right voice, think about sequencing, and—mo

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  Episode #527

  FIR #527: Delegating Hiring Decisions to AI

  Aug 24, 20261h 34m

  At one company, a leader discovered by chance that AI was rejecting job candidate applications within seconds of their arrival. One reason: They graduated from college before 2010, which contradicted the instruction to surface candidates who displayed “youthful energy.” What’s worse, the talent acquisition manager didn’t see any liability issues, since AI made the decision. Also in this long-form episode for August 2026: An expert witness used ChatGPT to prepare a report. The prompts he used to generate the report were uncovered during discovery and entered into evidence. Nutrogena parted ways with its spokesperson, Hayden Panetierre, more than a decade ago. Its rationale for that decision has created a crisis for Nutrogena today in the wake of Panetierre’s untimely death. Brands suddenly care about Reddit thanks to its (perceived) role in AI-generated overviews and summaries. Redditors haven’t returned the feeling. Meta is facing a trillion-dollar-plus judgment in its current trial, but even more consequential could be a requirement to strip from its social media platforms the devices that addicted young people, many of which have become standards for social media. Will social media as we know it change in the wake of the verdict? Some companies are compensating employees who join the ranks of influencers and creators sharing content about the companies’ products and services. It sounds like a good idea, until you look at the labor, HR, and legal issues that arise. In his Tech Report, Dan York provides more statistics about the decline in referral traffic thanks to AI overviews and searches via LLMs, Time magazine’s decision to inject ads into markdown files targeting AI agents (and Perplexity’s decision to block them), and LinkedIn’s “Seems Like AI Slop” option — is it working? Links from this episode: ‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit Man Obliterated When Court Obtains His ChatGPT Transcripts I Just Ran My Thesis, Written in 2014, Through an AI Detector Hayden Panettiere’s Old Neutrogena Story Resurfaces After Her Death Neutrogena Faces New Backlash After Hayden Panettiere’s Death Hayden Panettiere Dead: Clip of Star Discussing Neutrogena Dropping Her Over PPD Resurfaces Neutrogena Under Fire Again for Dropping Hayden Panettiere After She Revealed Postpartum Depression Struggle Neutrogena Faces Backlash After Hayden Panettiere’s Death. How Should the Brand Respond? Hayden Panettiere Said Neutrogena Dropped Her Over Postpartum Depression. Now Fans Are Boycotting Neutrogena Faces Backlash Over Hayden Panettiere’s Postpartum Depression Claims Brands Suddenly Care About Reddit. Redditors Don’t Return the Feeling. Reddit Fades From ChatGPT Citations No More Doom Scrolling or Instagram Stories? A Meta Trial Loss Could End the Social Media We Know Meta Trial Could Spell the ‘End of Social Media as We Know It’ LinkedIn Adds an Option to Report ‘AI Slop’ I Just Had a Deeply Alarming 45-Minute Sync With Our Talent Acquisition Team Gap Inc. Opens Creator Program to Employees Gap Inc. Expands Cross-Brand Creator and Social Advocacy Program to Employees Employee Creators Are a New Brand Strategy Inside David’s Bridal’s New Commission-Based Ambassador Program for Creators and Employees David’s Bridal Ramps Up Its Creator Strategy Why Starbucks Is Betting on Employees as Creators Why Brands Are Inviting Their Employees to Be Creators Why Major Retailers Are Turning Employees Into Content Creators: Billo Should Brands Build Creator Programs From Their Own Employees? 32 Experts on the Risks and Payoffs Links from Dan York’s Tech Report: Publisher Traffic Falls 33% Globally as AI Overviews Reshape Search In 2026, Less Than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click Time Has Started Serving Ads to AI Agents Perplexity Blocks Time’s Ads Being Served to AI Agents LinkedIn Adds a Button to Report AI-Generated ‘Slop’ LinkedIn Says Its ‘AI Slop’ Button Is Working The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, September 28. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog . You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog . Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi everyone, and welcome to the For Immediate Release podcast, long form episode 527 for August 2026. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz, and Neville, you’re back in your office. It’s good to see you back there again. It must mean that the heat wave has broken there in the UK. Neville Hobson: Yeah, it has. I’m enjoying a temperature of low twenties in here with the air conditioning on. It’s very nice. And beats what we’ve had with thirty plus upwards. Not good. But it’s been an interesting few weeks and on a number of levels. One of the highlights, in fact a big highlight, was the fact that when Laura and I and our grandkids and my daughter were visiting California at the beginning of August in Novato in Marin County, we met for lunch. We came into the city and you and I and the whole crew got together and we had a phenomenal time at that lunch, didn’t we? Shel Holtz: Yeah, we did at the Waterbar, right on the waterfront on Embarcadero Neville Hobson: Nice place. Shel Holtz: Overlooking the Bay Bridge. And it was fun to be able to have you sit in there, this wonderful building, and to say we built this because the company I work for Neville Hobson: Yeah. Shel Holtz: Did build the structure that the Waterbar is in and the steakhouse next to it, that whole complex. So that was fun, even though that was before my time that we built that. But it was great to see you and Laura. It had been since 2019. Neville Hobson: A while. Shel Holtz: And it was just delightful to meet your daughter after having heard about her for so many years. And to meet your wonderful granddaughters. They’re terrific. Neville Hobson: Yeah. Well, you made a big impression on them because they talked about you a lot afterwards. But it was it was good. I mean, it as we’ve both said, you know, in real life face to face can’t beat it. But this is the next best thing on video. So it was great catching up and enjoying a delightful lunch over a few hours. The wine was super that we had. It was Californian wine if I’m not wrong, Shel. Shel Holtz: Stag’s leap, if I remember correctly. Neville Hobson: Okay, no Spanish Rioja there. So that’s good. And we did enjoy our week overall, even though some of the circumstances weren’t quite as we had originally planned it. But it was good to, from my point of view, certainly, where a change is as good as a rest. So a change of scene coming over there I found extremely beneficial to recovering from some of the health problems that I’ve been having prior to that. So enjoyed it a lot, Shel, and we gotta do it again soon, I hope. Shel Holtz: Yeah, Michelle and I were talking about the fact that we need to get back over to the UK. So it won’t be won’t be next year. We already have our vacation next year plotted out, but maybe twenty-eight we’ll cross the pond and come see you. We’ve not been to Somerset, so need to make Neville Hobson: Okay, we’ll make a pencil note. Yeah. Shel Holtz: That journey. Neville Hobson: Yeah, this is this is quite something to experience for some assets. There’s a lot. Yeah, I look forward to that if we can if we can swing it, it’d be great. Shel Holtz: But we’re not gonna talk about personal stuff for the entire show. We will Neville Hobson: No. Shel Holtz: Be talking about stories in the news that have a connection to organizational communication and technology. And we hope that one of them at least sparks a comment from you listeners. And there are a number of ways that you can comment on. This show, the first is to just leave a comment in the comment field in the show notes at the FIR website, firpodcastnetwork. Com. You can also leave that comment on the post where we share updates on episodes that we have published, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Blue Sky. We share on all of them. And you can leave a comment there. We check those for your comments. You can send an email to FIR comments at gmail. Com and attach up to a two-minute audio file. If you would like us to play it, we would be happy to. You can even record that. No fuss, no mus, right there on the FIR website. We use a service called SpeakPipe. It has a tab on the right-hand side of the page that says send voicemail. Click and record, and I’ll get that. And there’s also the FIR community on Facebook where you can not only leave a comment but engage with other listeners. And yeah, lots of ways that you can share your comments and become part of the show and drive the content. We have some comments in this episode to share with you. Also, your reviews are very Neville Hobson: Super. Shel Holtz: Much appreciated wherever you have the opportunity to rate and review podcasts. That’s a great way for others to Neville Hobson: Mm-hmm. Shel Holtz: Discover FIR. Neville Hobson: Let’s begin with a recap of the episodes we’ve published over the past month and some listener comments. In the long form episode five twenty three for July published on the twenty seventh of july, You shall reported on rethinking thought leadership, maintaining brand sovereignty in the AI era, and whether hedging in your communication can serve a useful purpose. In FIR 524, on the 3rd of August, you addressed the topic of whether managers are ready to lead an AI fluent workforce or not. Too many indicators suggest they’re not. The subject of workslop. Was our topic in FIR five twenty five on the twelfth of August, with mounting evidence that it can create long term problems for companies. We discuss the latest research and share our thoughts on what businesses can do about it. And we have one comment. Shel Holtz: Yeah, from Mike Klein, who said, Of course, organizations have been clocking externalities as productivity gains since the time they started clocking anything at all. Neville Hobson: Okay. In FIR five twenty six, we added our thoughts to the growing debate about Anthropic’s new watermark feature that’s rolling out on Claude. That episode was published just last week, actually. We discussed one firm’s new AI writing policy and its four guiding principles for employees, which make far more sense to us than trying to detect a watermark. And we have some comments on this one. Shel Holtz: Yeah, Suzy Urjavik Parker wrote that this will never apply to me as a professional communicator because my writing is mine and mine alone. I don’t outsource any of it to a technology destined to destroy the environment, our water resources, and the creative process of humanity. Here’s to everyone saying no to this nonsense. And Ike Piggott, in a reply to Susie, said, let me search online and see if someone has written the thing I want so I can copy it. Is plagiarism. Yet for the AI evangelists, let me ask for a smoothie blend of hundreds of plagiarized documents is somehow fine. Feels like idiocracy is nigh. And Patrick Coyle in an independent comment said, No, we should definitely be asking, Did you use AI to write this? So a lot of people continue to object to this at a fundamental level. Neville Hobson: Yeah, I you’re right. I noticed that myself even. So the debate will continue, in my view, the wrong topic to be debating. It’s not it’s not doesn’t carry the same importance or weight as the one people should be talking about, which is the content that is produced, guidance on how to do it well and do it right. So, you know, this debate will continue for quite a while, I’d say. So yeah, now you’re up to date on FIR episodes. Shel Holtz: Great. Now let me bring you up to date on Circle of Fellows episodes. This is the monthly panel discussion featuring fellows of the International Association of Business Communicators. I usually moderate these and when I’m not available, Brad Whitworth does that. We have published episode number one hundred and thirty one. This is a monthly program, so you can imagine how many of how long this has been going on to get 131 of them out there. This was on the evolving media landscape and what it means for media relations, the fact that so many journalists are starting their own media companies with Substacks and YouTube channels and the like. And what does this do to pitching and the notion of reaching out to reporters in order to get coverage because the audiences that these media companies have is much smaller than the mainstream media. So it was a great conversation with Diana Degan, Ned Lundquist, Martha Muzychka. And Jennifer Waugh. The next episode is the first of a two-parter, and it is coming this Thursday. And it will feature Adrian Cropley, Bonnie Caver, Theomary Karamanis, and Mike Klein. We’re going to be talking about artificial intelligence and the leadership moment for the communications profession. So should be a good, robust discussion. And I as I say, we’re doing that in two parts. There will be four. Different fellows picking up part two of this in September. So now you’re all caught up on previous episodes, on Neville’s travels, on Circle of Fellows, and we’ll dive into our six stories right after this. Neville Hobson: So our first story is an interesting one, I find. Three people died, around 200 homes were destroyed, and millions of dollars were at stake. And an expert witness hired by 3M to help defend the company and the resulting litigation turned to ChatGPT to help write his expert report. That alone might raise questions, but it isn’t really the extraordinary part of the story. According to reporting by 404 Media, The expert, Josh Autenrieth, told ChatGPT that he had been retained by 3M and asked it to help him create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M. More remarkably, he instructed it to show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion. In other words, this wasn’t here is the evidence, help me analyze it and determine what happened. It was much closer to here is the conclusion. Help me build the argument that supports it. And we know this because his ChatGPT conversations became part of the legal discovery process. The prompts reveal something else rather astonishing. Autenrieth reportedly has about 20 years’ experience in gas detection. Yet at one point he uploaded a photograph of a gas detector to ChatGPT and asked, What am I looking at? According to one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, that detector was central to the entire case. There are obvious questions here about professional standards, disclosure, and the appropriate use of generative AI in expert testimony. But I think that’s a bigger question for organizations. AI can make it extraordinarily easy to construct a persuasive argument for something you’ve already decided to believe. Give it enough documents, tell it the conclusion you want, and ask it to assemble the strongest case. That’s not necessarily analysis, it can be automated confirmation bias. And if organizations increasingly use AI to support decisions, strategies, investigations, and recommendations, how do we distinguish between using AI to help us discover what the evidence says and using it to manufacture a convincing justification for what we already want the answer to be? And one more thought if your AI conversations might eventually be discoverable, perhaps we should start thinking about prompts, not simply as instructions to a machine. But as records of our reasoning. There’s an awful lot to unpack here, Shel, it seems to me. Shel Holtz: There certainly is. And at its core, this is a governance story. I don’t know if Neville Hobson: Mm. Shel Holtz: This expert witness was an independent contractor or if he worked for somebody. But at some level you need to have that governance that gives you the rules about how to use this and what you are going to retain. I mean this is why legal needs to play a part in that whole governance conversations because they understand the rules of discovery from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and they understand what kind of challenges can arise when in a lawsuit the other party has access to all of those prompts, all of those conversations that you’ve had with a large language model. So you need to have governance around this to begin with. The other issue that leaps to mind is that output could be three pages of highly polished slop that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but because it answered the question he set out to have it answer, he’s perfectly happy with it. I wonder if he challenged it at all. Did he put it through a any kind of a red team? I’ve I spent days creating a communications red team skill in ChatGPT. And I can run anything through this. I can run a detailed communication strategy through it. I can run a three-paragraph email we’re sending out on behalf of the CEO through this. And it puts it through all of these various levels in order to challenge what I’m saying here. What’s a fact and what’s an assumption? How are different audiences within the organization likely to react to this and so on and so forth. So I think, you know, first of all. Front loading the outcome that you’re looking for is dangerous enough. Leaving that paper trail there for a belligerent legal team to find is another level of bad. But then just assuming that the output is perfect and relying on that without putting it through some kind of challenge, I think is dangerous. I think this was a disaster waiting to happen from the get-go. Neville Hobson: Yeah. The thing I find extraordinary, frankly, is did anybody at the client check any of this? Was there a human client in the loop? I wonder. There’s something else too to mention that the Futurism also reported on this as well as 404 Media. They’re they reported that over three hundred and fifty pages Of ChatGPT activity were turned over in the discovery process. And I’m thinking to myself, what this suggests to me, apart from the obvious things, is that this was someone who didn’t quite understand how ChatGPT works in terms of what it retains, how it retains it. And the other side did. So when they did the discovery, they knew what to look for and how to ask for it. So it still comes back to Probably the legal team at three N. Did they not rehearse this? Did they not know what this expert witness was going to be asking or going to be presenting? I from reading the four media report, this all came out during the presentation of by the expert witness in the lawsuit. So it came unknown to anyone. I mean, goodness me, that’s no way to run a defense in a lawsuit of this magnitude, it seems to me. So, I’m surprised it’s not got more coverage than it has, actually, but it is extraordinary that this actually happened, it seems to me. Shel Holtz: Yeah, I’m not surprised it hasn’t gotten more attention because it’s, my God, another law story where somebody used ChatGPT and it bit in the ass. You know, we hear those pretty frequently.

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  Episode #526

  FIR #526: Forget Anthropic’s AI Watermark. Can You Defend Every Sentence?

  Aug 17, 202623 min

  Anthropic’s watermark scheme is the focus of so much discussion that you could be excused for thinking there was nothing else to talk about. For many, it’s the solution to identifying all those evil-doers who offload their writing to large language models. But we are wasting far too much time trying to determine whether (and to what degree) AI was involved in creating content. Much more important is determining whether the content was crafted with respect for the reader, and whether the creator can stand by every word. That’s the idea behind the new AI writing policy from the software company Clay, which makes far more sense than trying to detect a watermark. Links from this episode: Clay AI Writing Policy: 4 Guiding Principles How Claude marks AI-generated content Anthropic’s watermark survives copy-paste, but not the real dev workflow Can Anthropic’s invisible watermarks curb ‘AI slop’? Researchers remain sceptical Anthropic’s text watermarks signal new front in AI detection Claude’s new Scarlet Letter watermark is invisible—for now How to Build a Responsible AI Writing Policy How Claude’s text watermarking works Claude is now watermarking every response — here’s what that means if you use AI for writing I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I. The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, August 24. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog . You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog . Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 526. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz. In the last episode of FIR, we talked about workslop and the implications workslop brings to the workplace. We’re going to continue down that path today. I’m sure you’ve all seen the headlines about Anthropic putting an invisible watermark on anything Claude writes. I want to separate what that actually does from what people have been claiming. First, you won’t see this watermark. It’s not a “written by Claude” tag. It’s machine-readable. It survives copy and paste, and it may even survive some editing. The reason Anthropic came up with this is to comply with the transparency rules under the EU AI Act, and it applies everywhere Claude runs: the app, the API, Claude Code, Cowork, cloud providers — you name it. You can’t paste text into a public detector and expose someone yet. Anthropic says detection tools are coming, but it hasn’t released any of them. Here’s roughly how it works: Every time Claude generates text, it’s choosing between several equally good next words — say, “gray” or “overcast.” Normally, that choice is random. With watermarking, though, a secret cryptographic key nudges that randomness in a consistent way. No single word looks suspicious, but across a couple hundred word choices in an article, the pattern becomes statistically detectable if you have the cryptographic key. That’s completely different from tools like Pangram, which look for writing patterns that seem AI-like — you know, em dashes, overuse of words like “delve” or “tapestry” or “underscore,” constantly grouping things in threes. These are all things real writers do, by the way. The rule of three is nothing unique to AI, nor are em dashes. That’s why I don’t put much stock in these tools. Anthropic’s detector doesn’t guess. It tests whether the text matches the pattern its own cryptographic key would produce. Now, it’s particularly important to understand that a detected watermark means the content was processed by Claude. It doesn’t mean Claude wrote it. You could write something yourself, have Claude clean up the grammar, and it would still carry that watermark. Axios flagged exactly this risk for communications teams that polish a human-written press release with Claude. It also works in reverse, by the way. Heavily edit, paraphrase, translate, or blend the text with other writing, and that watermark can disappear. Short passages may not carry enough signal to be detected at all. So this isn’t a foolproof “Did a human use AI?” detector. Picture a reporter running a company statement through a detector and calling it AI-generated when your team actually wrote it and just had Claude do the final polish. The watermark tells you about processing. It can’t tell you who did the thinking. And that brings me to Clay, the software company, which just rolled out an AI writing policy. I think this is actually more important than a watermarking system. The policy had its origins in Clay’s engineering department, but it has since gone company-wide. It’s not a ban. Brainstorming with AI, drafting, proofreading — all that’s fine. Instead, the policy has four principles. First, stand behind every idea and every sentence. Second, writing is thinking. Third, spend more time creating a document than you expect someone to spend reading it. And fourth, longer isn’t better. And AI, by the way, notoriously pads its content. I like this policy a lot. I like it a lot more than “Don’t use AI to write.” Because sometimes AI writing is exactly the right call. Plenty of people are great at their jobs and bad at writing. Engineers are a great example. I’ve used engineers as an example of this before. If AI helps these people organize their explanation and turn an incomprehensible email into something readable, that’s good for everyone. The problem is AI can make bad thinking look like good writing. This is what we were talking about last week with workslop. You give the model a thin prompt, it hands back three polished pages, and now you’ve just shifted the work of figuring out what you meant onto everyone else who has to read it. The prose looks finished, so the creator of that content feels like they’ve finished, but the thinking never actually happened. That was how we defined workslop last week when we talked about it. So companies don’t need an AI policy that’s focused on AI. They need one that’s focused on accountability, quality, and respect for the reader. Cover the basics, for sure. List the approved tools. Talk about confidential information and how it gets used. Talk about fact-checking and human review and brand voice and blah, blah, blah. But add that Clay test: Can you defend every sentence? Does it represent what you actually think? Did you verify the facts? Did you cut the padding? And did AI make the communication better, or did you just shift your effort onto your audience? For communicators, that last question is the one to focus on. The watermark debate is going to tempt organizations to obsess over detection: Was AI used? Can we prove it? Should we disclose it? Yeah, sometimes, I guess, that’s a fair question. But the better ones are: Is the thinking ours? Is it accurate? Does it serve the reader? And is a human willing to stand behind every word? If we can get those things right, I’m not too worried about whether Claude helped fix a few sentences along the way, watermark or no watermark. Neville Hobson: Hmm. We have talked about this before — this kind of weird obsession so many people seem to have with trying to figure out whether someone used AI to write a piece so they can exclaim with great glee, “Yeah, this guy wrote this. It’s 96 percent AI. He didn’t write it at all. It’s a scam, it’s fake,” blah, blah, blah. Shel Holtz: Yeah. Neville Hobson: We’re already seeing it happen with this. Someone wrote the other day about this, “Finally, a way to get rid of AI slop.” What? I mean, isn’t — Shel Holtz: No. Neville Hobson: It isn’t going to do that. This obsession isn’t going to stop, I don’t think. And, in fact, maybe the best thing out of the Clay principles is taking the focus away from that and moving it to the writing, to authorship, to accountability, as you point out. The caution, I would say, is don’t obsess about this. Don’t set concrete rules that are so inflexible that you’re going to end up with writing that isn’t flexible at all. The point, I guess, is to concentrate on the actual writing. Think about what it is that you’re writing. So let’s move away from “Did you use AI to write this?” to something like, “What was your contribution to this?” That, to me, is a healthier discussion to have. There are still going to be lots of people who do the “gotcha” talk. I saw one today on LinkedIn: “I would never hire someone who uses AI to copywrite. That kind of approach isn’t for my team,” and stuff like that. I think asking what your contribution was encourages accountability, whereas “Did you use AI to write this?” is all about concealment and policing — discovering that someone did and assuming or implying that they’ve cheated somehow. That said, I think the point that you need to stand behind every idea and sentence is absolutely spot on. And that’s not new. We should have been doing that all along. That’s probably the right way to approach it. For example, don’t ask Claude to write something: “Here’s a topic. Write a 1,200-word piece arguing that communicators need to take responsibility for AI governance.” Claude produces it, you might edit two or three sentences, and you’re done. You publish it under your name. That is substantially AI-generated writing, and the watermark is relevant. But for what, though? So someone could say, “Gotcha”? You don’t know what that was for. You don’t know what’s wrong with that. Has someone deceived you? I suppose, by implication, if it’s under their name, they have deceived you in that they wrote it. They didn’t; the AI wrote it. But what’s the difference between that and, as a comparison, Grammarly or something like that, which suggests paragraph changes and you accept every single one of its recommendations? You end up with something that’s then 70 to 80 percent Grammarly, as opposed to you. Better, though, to avoid ethical issues and accusations and all that stuff, is that you do the writing. Don’t dump the stuff on the AI. You do the writing and introduce your own thinking to this. Have the AI — Claude or whatever it might be — check it. Ask it to proofread it. Ask it, “Is there any other angle I could have incorporated in this?” or “Do you think this is the right approach?” I do that a lot with the stuff that I write. And I must admit, probably two out of three times, I’ll accept some of the recommendations the chatbot comes back with. Sorry, the AI assistant comes back with. I don’t call it chatbot. Shel Holtz: Ha ha ha. Neville Hobson: And there I just slipped up. I did. So I think we’ll have to weather the gotchas all the time, and so be it. But if you are confident in doing the writing, using your AI assistant as the guide for you — as, in a sense, the editor that sits by your side, the critiquer that tells you what it thinks and where you could improve this or don’t say that — follow guidelines such as Clay has done, and you should be okay. Shel Holtz: Yeah. The piece on Clay’s writing policy makes the point, as I mentioned, that writing is thinking. Writing is the way we process our thoughts and test our thoughts. And this is a point that I think a lot of people have made. In fact, I just read this in The New York Times. I think it was over the weekend. I think it was an op-ed that was exhorting people to please, for God’s sake, write your own stuff because we don’t want to lose the ability to think. The problem is, I think most of these proclamations come from writers. You and I are writers, and the communities that we interact with on LinkedIn in particular are probably also writers. We’re connected to people who are engaged in communications, and hence you get the opposition to using AI to write. But again, what about an accountant? What about an engineer? There are so many jobs out there where being a really good writer was never a requirement when these folks were earning their degrees or their certificates. And now, because they’re in the business world, they have to communicate effectively. So how do you go about the thinking process? No, you don’t want to delegate it to AI. You don’t want to say, “Write an email about X” or “Write a blog post about X.” You want to think it through. But does that mean you think it through by writing? Well, not if you’re not a writer, necessarily. You may think it through by creating an outline, by doing a brain dump. It could even be — this is something Chris Penn talks about a lot — just recording your thoughts as audio and then uploading that file and saying, “These are my thoughts. Now turn this into a coherent email to this audience designed to produce this result.” Then you go back and you review it and edit it so that you can defend every sentence, every word. Again, I think this is all about respect for the reader. And if the way you demonstrate respect for the reader, knowing that you’re a terrible writer, is using AI, that’s appropriate. If you just knock out this email, people are going to go, “What is he talking about? I don’t know what he’s trying to get at here.” Respect for the reader is using the AI to make that message clearer, more cogent, more understandable, and more actionable. So, again, I really like those four pillars. And I think there undoubtedly will be ways to defeat the Claude watermark. People will come up with them. Anything that is designed to catch people is something somebody else is going to come up with a way to circumvent. In the meantime, though, as you say, this is not a surefire way to catch somebody. It’s going to identify that Claude processed this, not that Claude wrote it. So I think people need to calm down and start thinking about this tool in a way that provides the high-quality content that you’re trying to deliver to people — not just something polished that makes them have to figure out what you intended because it’s polished but no thinking went into it. The thinking still has to go into it, whether Claude’s going to do the lion’s share of the writing or not. Neville Hobson: Yeah. I mean, I think the interesting distinction is between AI-generated and AI-assisted writing. Although I add my own caveat to that, which is: Who cares? I mean, truly, do I want to get into a discussion about that? No, I do not. So I know the difference. I’m not evangelizing that everyone should understand and follow the difference, although it’s helpful to. For example, using Claude, you give Claude a short prompt — it’s not Cowork, by the way; this is just the chat — and it produces an article. You tell it, “I want to write about X, and the topic is this, and I want to achieve this. These are the points I want to make.” Maybe not even as much as that. And Claude produces, you know, a 600-word draft, and you lightly edit it. Lightly meaning maybe you change not the syntax so much, but certain expressive words that you might use. If that’s your bag, sure. Although you would have given — Shel Holtz: Or adding the Oxford comma. Neville Hobson: — your AI assistant the guidance about your preference on the Oxford comma. Shel Holtz: Presumably, yeah. Neville Hobson: It would know. So you do that. On the other hand, if you’ve already developed the argument, you’ve already got a clear picture in your mind, you’ve researched it, you’ve used Claude to challenge or improve your thinking, and you make the editorial decisions yourself, that’s another matter entirely. That, I believe, is AI-assisted writing. So, as we mentioned earlier in the discussion, the better question isn’t, “Did you use AI?” but, “What was your intellectual contribution?” So, writing is thinking. Yeah, I don’t disagree with that. Although, again, I don’t want to get hung up on having definitions all over the place about this. The danger is real of turning this into another policing technology, which many people are already starting to do. I did see in Anthropic’s FAQ about watermarking where they say, in answer to the question, “How do I check if a piece of text was written by Claude?”, “We will soon be offering a watermark detection API. We’re in the process of working out the details of its implementation.” So that’s coming. That’ll give those gotcha people a lot more ammo to say “gotcha” a lot more, I bet. It just takes attention away from what really matters with all of this. But, you know, like a lot of things that are new, we have to go through all this. So my recommendation is: Don’t give it too much attention. Be sure in your own mind that what you’re doing is, in your definition, the right way of going about it. You feel confident that it is. You have guidelines to follow, such as Clay’s, for instance, so you are able to say, “Yep, these four things — I do these things in all my approaches to this.” In which case, you can wave two fingers at the gotchas. Shel Holtz: Yeah, and I can’t emphasize this enough: The detection is not going to be focused on whether Claude wrote this. It’s whether it processed it. So you could have written it and then sent it through Claude for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and the watermark will show up, even though you wrote it. So the gotcha is, I think, a little disingenuous in a lot of cases. I mean, it could be that somebody used it to write, for sure, but it’s not a sure thing. It’s not a lock that if the detector says, “Yes, Claude processed this,” then, “Aha! You wrote this with AI.” Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean that at all. Neville Hobson: But even if he did, so what? If someone says that, do I care? Not at all. Shel Holtz: Well, and again, I come back to the engineer or the accountant who wants to be understood and is not a writer. I think that’s where this tool shines and where we have opportunities for better clarity and better understanding in the workplace. Do I expect my professional writers to write? Yeah, absolutely. Do I expect my accountants to write? My lawyers? Not necessarily. Neville Hobson: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s one other thing about this, too. I did read Anthropic’s technical paper describing what this is and how it works. I’m going to have to actually ask Claude to simplify this — give it to me in simple terms so I can understand it well. Shel Holtz: Ask Claude. No, better yet, ask ChatGPT to do it. Neville Hobson: Because it talks about, for instance, let’s say you asked Claude to write a piece. You briefed Claude, it did that, you edited it, passed it back to Claude, it made some recommendations, which you implemented, in

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