Hi Reader,
Three different pieces crossed my desk this week. They all said the same thing.
Ragan's mid-year review called AI a phenomenal productivity tool and a terrible replacement for strategy. FGS Global's Aaron Kwittken argued AI won't shrink your comms team, it will make human judgment the most valuable thing on it. And on World PR Day, the whole industry landed on one word: trust.
Here's what nobody tells you. Agreeing that humans matter is easy. Deciding exactly where a human has to stay in the loop is the hard part.
Most teams rolled out AI tool-first. They trained people on prompts before anyone decided which steps a machine should never own outright.
That gap is where the trust problems live. It's also where the next AI policy question from your CEO is coming from.
So this week, you're going to map it. One workflow at a time.
ππ½ Here's the prompt:
π― Expert Mode: The "Human-in-the-Loop Audit"
Scenario: Your team has started using AI across your comms work, but no one has drawn a clear line between the steps AI can own and the steps that need a human's judgment, relationships, or accountability. You want that line drawn, documented, and turned into a starter AI-use policy you can share this week.
Instructions:
1οΈβ£ Pick one real workflow your team runs often. Media pitching, executive messaging, internal announcements, monitoring, or reporting. Choose the one where AI has quietly crept in the most.
2οΈβ£ Write it out as the actual steps you take, start to finish, in plain language. One line per step is enough.
3οΈβ£ Paste your step list into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini along with this prompt:
Act as a communications risk and AI governance advisor. Below is a workflow my team runs, broken into steps. For each step, classify it as one of three: AI-Owned (the machine can do this with light review), Human-in-the-Loop (AI drafts or assists, but a person must review and approve before it moves), or Human-Only (judgment, relationships, ethics, or accountability make this a person's job). For each Human-in-the-Loop and Human-Only step, name the specific risk that justifies keeping a person in it: accuracy, tone, legal exposure, relationship, confidentiality, or reputational judgment. Then flag any step where we are currently letting AI do more than it should, and recommend the guardrail that fixes it. Output a table, then write a five-line AI-use summary my team could follow tomorrow.
4οΈβ£ Review the classification and push back. Move a step you disagree with, tighten a guardrail, or add a risk the model missed. You know your exposure better than it does.
5οΈβ£ Turn the output into a one-page guardrail you actually publish. Where AI can own the step, where a human must sign off, and the three rules everyone on the team follows.
Suggested Tool: Claude (strongest at structured, nuanced classification), ChatGPT, or Gemini.
Why You'll Love It
- It turns a vague value ("humans still matter") into a concrete map of who owns what, which is the thing your team can actually follow on a Tuesday.
- It hands you the first draft of an AI-use policy without a committee, a consultant, or a three-week working group.
- It works at any altitude. Run it on one pitch workflow today, or run it across every workflow your team owns.
The teams that win the next year won't be the ones that adopted AI fastest. They will be the ones that were clearest about where a human still has to stand. This is how you get clear.
Talk soon,
Chris
Want to run this as an agentic workflow? Here is the Cowork version.
Instead of classifying one workflow by hand, Claude can map several at once, check them against your real guidelines, and drop a ready-to-share AI-use policy into your folder.
Setup (one time):
- List the 2 to 4 comms workflows you want mapped (for example: media pitching, executive byline review, internal announcements)
- Decide where you want the output saved (default: your NEWSLETTER folder, or name a team folder)
- Optional: drop in any existing AI guidelines, style guide, or a recent example of each workflow for Claude to reference
Run this Cowork command:
Run a Human-in-the-Loop Audit for my comms team across these workflows: [list your 2 to 4 workflows]. Do the following:
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1οΈβ£ For each workflow, break it into its real steps and classify every step as AI-Owned, Human-in-the-Loop, or Human-Only.
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2οΈβ£ For each Human-in-the-Loop and Human-Only step, name the specific risk (accuracy, tone, legal exposure, relationship, confidentiality, or reputational judgment) that justifies keeping a person in it.
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3οΈβ£ Flag every step where we are currently letting AI do more than it should, and recommend the guardrail that fixes it.
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4οΈβ£ If I shared existing guidelines, check my workflows against them and note where we are out of policy.
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5οΈβ£ Write a one-page team AI-use policy (what AI can own, what always needs human review, and the three rules everyone follows). Save it as Comms-AI-Use-Policy.md in [target folder], plus a Human-in-the-Loop-Audit.md with the full step-by-step tables.
What you'll get:
- A step-by-step classification table for every workflow you named
- A risk note on each step that keeps a human in the loop
- A list of the places you are over-trusting AI today, with the guardrail for each
- A one-page AI-use policy your team can follow tomorrow, saved to your folder
- A full audit file you can hand to legal, leadership, or a client
Want it on autopilot? Say "Schedule this audit to run quarterly and flag any workflow that has drifted out of policy" and Claude will add it to your task schedule and drop an updated policy in your folder automatically.
Here are a few articles from the past week to help keep you up to speed:
1.OpenAI renews $5M bet on local newsβ
Axios
July 21, 2026
OpenAI committed another $5 million in funding plus $3 million in tech credits to the American Journalism Project, deepening its push into local news. For comms pros, the signal is clear: the AI-and-publisher relationship is shifting from lawsuits toward licensing and partnership. If your clients pitch regional and local outlets, the economics of who surfaces that coverage are changing under your feet.
2.New Notified/PRWeek Report Reveals How Brands Are Rethinking Content for AI Searchβ
PRWeek and Notified
July 22, 2026
The stat that should stop you: of 8,000 press releases distributed in June, 99.3% were cited by ChatGPT or Claude. The report lays out a four-signal framework (structure, originality, authority, recency) for the content AI actually pulls into its answers. Your next release is writing for two audiences now, the reporter and the model.
3.Your Comms Team Doesn't Need an AI God. It Needs These Five Rolesβ
CommPRO
July 23, 2026
FGS Global's Aaron Kwittken argues AI won't shrink your comms team. It will change who you hire and make human judgment the most valuable thing on the roster. A useful counter to the "AI replaces headcount" panic, and a preview of the skills conversation coming to your next planning cycle.
4.Internal Communications in 2026: A Mid-Year Reviewβ
Ragan
July 20, 2026
Six months in, the verdict on AI in internal comms is blunt: a phenomenal productivity tool, a terrible replacement for strategy. The piece is a clean reminder that AI can draft, translate, and repurpose, but it cannot read culture or build employee trust in a hard moment. Keep the human voice unmistakable where it counts.
5.World PR Day 2026: As AI Disrupts Communications, the PR Industry Enters Its Strategic Eraβ
BW Marketing World
July 16, 2026
The through-line across World PR Day: in a perma-crisis, misinformation-heavy environment, trust becomes the currency and PR becomes a strategic management function rather than a tactical one. AI handles scale; humans lead with ethics, relationships, and judgment. A useful frame for the bigger conversation with your leadership team.
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