Jennifer Sanchis, insights consultant at CARMA AI, believes AI isn’t replacing communications professionals, but it is forcing a reckoning about where human judgement and consultancy still create real value.

“AI is taking over our jobs.” It’s the headline, boardroom whisper and subtext of nearly every industry conversation today. Across communications, and particularly in measurement and evaluation (M&E), there’s growing concern about the impact of automation. Every week seems to bring news of more companies reducing headcount or reshaping teams in response to AI capabilities.

Unilever, for example, has scaled its AI content studio across 18 markets, achieving a 30% productivity uplift in asset production; Amazon and others have also openly indicated that AI adoption will influence future hiring needs.

Microsoft’s July 2025 paper, ‘Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI,’ identified occupations where AI tools have high applicability to the tasks involved. The study analysed over 200,000 user interactions to determine which job activities were most often and successfully assisted by AI. Public relations specialists were among the roles with high task overlap, at 63%, placing communications squarely in the danger zone. For comparison, interpreters and translators showed 98% overlap.

And this disruption is already being felt in the industry: WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising and public relations companies, saw its share price fall by 18% over just six months. That’s not a blip; these are the signals of the old agency model under pressure as clients bring work in-house with the help of increasingly sophisticated AI tools. The misconception here is that agencies are losing relevance.

In reality, they still have it (particularly in comms’ M&E, which has historically been a sticking point for the industry), it’s just that their perceived value is in crisis.

An important point to note is that communication is evolving, not disappearing. AI is reshaping workflows, but the real edge still lies in human consultancy, seen in interpreting insights, turning data into meaningful action and defining what success actually looks like. These are all skills that machines just can’t replicate.

A stark reminder of the danger that comes with careless use of AI comes from Deloitte’s recent Australian government report, riddled with AI-generated errors, misquotes and fictitious references.

While this case is not directly about communication M&E, it does highlight a critical point: human-only work is still highly valued, and trust in human intelligence remains far higher than in AI output, which can have some serious reputational consequences.

Thus, communication professionals need to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills to navigate this new landscape and create what one might call their “AI moat,” that to thrive in a world driven by machines and AI, you can only thrive by building what I call an AI moat, and in this way, we will all have to behave a little bit more like consultants.

Building an AI moat

Communication professionals can draw inspiration from the principles of strong consultancy. The first step is to sharpen our human advantage as interpretation, empathy and cultural intelligence remain irreplaceable in M&E. Rather than competing with machines, which clients can simply replicate with AI, our value lies in explaining the meaning behind the numbers with wider context and knowledge to shape the decisions that follow.

This also requires being truly honest about what clients can and cannot do in this new landscape. The hype surrounding AI is loud and persistent, and part of our role is to clarify where automation genuinely adds value and where human judgement is still essential for accuracy, context and credibility.

Soft skills

AI can summarise information, but it cannot read emotions, interpret interpersonal dynamics or understand the subtle nuances of relationships and trust within a team. These relational and emotional intelligence skills, such as the ability to navigate human interactions with sensitivity and insight, remain uniquely human. The complex, messy grey areas are where strategy lives and are not easily captured by models trained on past patterns.

Soft skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence and sensitivity have always been central to communication. But relational intelligence is more than this; it’s the ability to build trust in moments of high risk. An example of this is from 1962, when astronaut John Glenn (widely known as the first American to orbit the Earth) refused to proceed with his orbital flight until mathematician and “human computer” Katherine Johnson, personally verified the calculations first. They had already been done by IBM computers, but he wanted confirmation from a human being that he trusted. He needed to look her in the eye and ask: “Is this right?”

This real-life moment captures the essence of relational intelligence, and our clients do the same. Sometimes they simply need the reassurance of a human who understands the stakes, the politics and the people involved in their business.

Be a Swiss army knife

Modern corporate affairs demand far more than a single specialism; they require a cross-functional approach combining geopolitical insight, cultural awareness, reputational foresight and technological fluency.

The 2025 Oxford-GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey shows these skills are now expected, simultaneously, and this is where human judgement is irreplaceable. Like a Swiss army knife, no single skill is enough: AI can support, but it cannot replace the multi-disciplinary perspective that communication consultants provide.

AI is fundamentally capped

Large language models (LLMs), like those behind ChatGPT and Perplexity, have limits and may reach them faster than expected. Wharton’s Ethan Mollick predicts that by 2026, AI companies will run out of high-quality training data. Why? Because AI is trained on human creativity, and we’re the internet is rapidly becoming dominated by AI-generated content. Analysis shows AI-generated articles rose from 10% in late 2022 to over 40% in 2024, before plateauing.

Without fresh, genuinely creative input, these models will inevitably collapse under the weight of their own sameness. Communication is, fundamentally, a creativity-driven industry, so when everything starts to sound the same, human originality becomes premium. AI is most powerful when paired with human insight, but it cannot replicate the limitless learning and judgment that define us.

Therefore, developing our critical thinking becomes essential. No AI system is neutral and understanding where bias originates will help us interpret insights more responsibly. Large language models do not reflect reality; they refract it through their creators and training data.

The key takeaway is that we should not reject AI – none of us can, and none of us should. The real task is making sure we use it in a way that elevates the value of our work rather than diluting it. Most comms professionals already grasp that AI can be a strength, not a substitute; a tool to be embedded thoughtfully, not a thinking partner to be blindly trusted.

This matters even more during Measurement Month, because AI can surface data, but it cannot fully comprehend the “why” behind the words or the broader context driving them. We must define the impact of the technologies at our fingertips, articulate authentic opinions, build personal credibility and apply critical thinking; all of which are capabilities that remain firmly human.

The practitioners who treat AI as an extension of their expertise, rather than a replacement for it, will be the ones who stay indispensable.