AI is Reading Your Press Release Too

For decades, communicators have written press releases with a fairly clear audience in mind: journalists.

We thought about the headline, the lead, the quote, and the news value. We asked whether a reporter would understand the story, whether the announcement was compelling enough to cover, and whether we had made it easy for someone on deadline to find the important facts.

Then search changed the equation. Suddenly, we also had to think about what people might type into Google and whether our content could actually be found.

Now there is another layer to consider: AI.

That doesn't mean an AI system is sitting somewhere waiting for your company's next press release to hit the wire. But people are increasingly using AI-powered search and research tools to ask questions about companies, industries, executives, products, and current events. Those systems can pull from information available across the public web, including the material organizations publish about themselves.

And people are searching differently because of it.

Instead of typing a company name followed by "press release," someone might ask, "What companies has XYZ acquired in the last five years?" Or, "Why did XYZ enter the healthcare market?" Or, "What has the CEO said about the company's growth strategy?"

The answer they receive may be assembled from multiple sources. Your press release could be one of them.

That matters because a press release is no longer just a tool for generating media coverage. It becomes part of the public record your organization is creating about itself. It may inform a reporter today, a prospective employee six months from now, a customer doing research next year, or an AI-generated answer to a question you never anticipated.

That makes clarity more important than ever.

Communicators have always battled corporate language. We have all seen phrases like "innovative solutions," "transformational opportunities," "industry-leading capabilities," and "a commitment to excellence." They sound impressive until you stop and ask what they actually mean.

A journalist can call and ask you to explain.

AI probably won't.

It will work with the information it can find.

If your company announces a "strategic partnership designed to transform the customer experience" but never clearly explains what the partnership does, who it serves, what is changing or why it matters, you have left a gap in the story.

And someone else may fill it.

It could be a reporter, an analyst, an industry publication, a competitor, a social media post, or an old article that explains your company more clearly than you did.

That's where this becomes a reputation issue.

For years, communications teams have talked about owning the narrative. I have always believed that was less about controlling every conversation and more about making sure an organization clearly and credibly tells its own story. AI makes that even more important.

The goal isn't to start writing press releases for machines. It isn't to cram them with keywords or chase every new acronym that emerges around AI search.

It is to make sure the source material is good.

Say what happened. Give people enough context to understand why it matters. Use specific facts instead of vague claims. Clearly identify the companies, people, and products involved. Make sure the information in your press release aligns with what appears on your website, in executive interviews, on LinkedIn, and elsewhere your organization communicates.

Those basics have always mattered. The difference now is that you can pull together, compare, and summarize information in seconds.

It also makes me think differently about something I have heard throughout my career: "Does anyone even read press releases anymore?"

Maybe that was never the right question.

A press release doesn't have to be read from beginning to end by thousands of people to have value. It can establish a factual record. It can provide dates, names, context, and quotes. It can explain a company's position in its own words. People can reference, search, quote, and rediscover it long after the announcement has disappeared from everyone's newsfeed.

And now it can also become part of the information AI uses to explain your organization to someone else.

Communications has always been about more than the immediate audience in front of us. What we publish lives beyond the moment it was created.

A reporter may interpret it. A search engine may surface it. Someone may share it on social media. An AI tool may summarize it as part of a much larger answer.

We don't control every step after we hit publish.

But we do control the quality of what we put into the information ecosystem in the first place.

And in a world where more people are asking AI what to know about your company, your reputation may depend in part on whether you gave it something accurate, clear, and credible to find.