Will AI Replace PR and Comms? What the Salaries Say

No. AI will take over the drafting, summarizing and repurposing parts of PR, and it already has. It will not replace the judgment, relationships and nerve that the job depends on. The clearest sign is that the companies building AI are paying a lot for human communicators. And AI search is making earned coverage more valuable, not less.

Will AI replace PR and comms teams?

The claim matters most to founders deciding whether a comms budget is still worth it. In May 2026 I answered it on X.

"AI is going to wipe out PR and comms." Cool story. Meanwhile at Anthropic, Netflix, and OpenAI: They're writing very large checks for human communicators. Shilika Jain on X, 4 May 2026

My point was simple. If AI could do the whole job, the companies with the best access to it would be the first to stop hiring for it. In that post I argued they are doing the opposite: doubling down.

What are AI companies paying human communicators?

These are the figures exactly as I posted them in May 2026. They are a snapshot from that post, not a salary survey.

Nobody pays that for someone to write press releases. Pay at that level is for judgment: deciding what to say, when to say it, when to say nothing, and who needs to hear it first.

The people closest to AI understand this best. Shilika Jain on X, 4 May 2026

What does AI do well in PR?

I am not an AI skeptic. In the same post I was specific about what it handles.

AI can draft. AI can summarize. AI can repurpose at scale. Shilika Jain on X, 4 May 2026

In practice that covers a lot of hours:

• Drafting. First versions of releases, briefing notes, Q&A documents and pitch variations.
• Summarizing. Turning long reports, transcripts and coverage into something a founder can read in two minutes.
• Repurposing. One interview becomes a thread, a LinkedIn post, a newsletter section and a blog.

All three are production tasks. They start after someone has decided what the story is. AI makes a small team faster at producing. It does not decide what is worth producing.

What can AI not do in PR?

My post listed four things. Each one is a moment where the outcome depends on a person.

• Read the room. Knowing that this is the wrong week for your announcement, or that a reporter's question is really about something else.
• Build trust with a skeptical reporter. Reporters take calls from people who have been straight with them before. That history cannot be generated.
• Push back on a founder in a high-stakes moment. Sometimes the most valuable thing a comms lead says is "do not post that". A tool that drafts whatever it is asked to draft will never say it.
• Handle a crisis while the story is still unfolding. In a live crisis the facts are incomplete and every statement has legal, community and market consequences. I cover how that works in my crypto crisis communications playbook.

This gap is visible in the AI sector itself. In May 2026 I wrote:

So many AI companies raising crazy $$$ but so bad PR, this needs to change!! Shilika Jain on X, 16 May 2026

These teams have the best tools available. If tools were enough, their PR would be excellent. What is usually missing is positioning and relationships, which is the work I describe in the AI startup PR playbook.

Is original writing still worth paying for?

More than before. In June 2026 I described the loop the industry is in: we used to write creative content without AI, then everyone saw the potential and started using AI to write, and then the demand swung back.

Now brands need folks that could write old-school original content without using AI Shilika Jain on X, 19 Jun 2026

When everyone has the same drafting tool, average content is free and everywhere. Editors and readers notice. What stands out is a real opinion, a first-hand story or a number nobody else has. Those come from people.

Why does AI search make earned coverage more valuable?

The old question was how to rank on Google. The new one is how to show up when someone asks an AI assistant for the best tool in a category. The underlying problem is not new. I wrote this in 2022:

Googling best exchanges in crypto only shows you exchanges that have best SEO Shilika Jain on X, 8 Dec 2022

I also wrote that year that Web3 companies working on localization and SEO would not need to spend millions of dollars on marketing. Visibility in search has always been cheaper than buying attention. GEO, generative engine optimization, is the same idea for AI answers.

The difference is what gets rewarded. My reasoning is this: an AI assistant builds its answer from sources it can find and has reason to trust. Your own website saying you are the best is a weak signal. An independent article, an interview or an expert roundup that names you is a much stronger one. That is earned coverage, and it is exactly the part of PR that AI cannot do for you, because it depends on a journalist choosing to write about you.

In August 2026 I posted that the crypto projects doubling down on GEO now are the ones that will see strong organic traffic in the months to come, and that it is still underrated. I stand by that. If you want the practical steps, start with my guides on building AI search visibility and getting cited by ChatGPT.

How should a founder split the work between AI and people?

A simple rule: use AI where speed matters and people where consequences matter.

So AI is not going to wipe out comms. It removes the busywork, which leaves the hard parts as the whole job, and those are the parts worth paying for.

## Posts this piece is built on - 4 May 2026: "AI is going to wipe out PR and comms." Cool story. - 16 May 2026: so many AI companies raising crazy $$$ but so bad PR - 19 Jun 2026: we are in an AI loop - 13 Aug 2026: the crypto projects who double - 8 Dec 2022: googling best exchanges in crypto only shows you - 3 Nov 2022: if web3 companies started working on the localization strategies

Want earned coverage that also shows up in AI answers? Talk to me about PR and GEO for your company.