Holtz Communications + Technology

In multiple ways, Artificial Intelligence is redefining the role of the public relations professional. Some of that change is the result of new tools that automate processes that once consumed copious amounts of time. One such tool reviews services that solicit expert commentary at journalists’ requests, then crafts responses. The marketing of this tool, dubbed Synapse by its Lithuanian founders, has…

A growing body of research suggests employees are more disconnected than ever. What are internal communication teams getting wrong? Also in this long-form monthly episode for June 2025:

• Buzzstream interviewed over 150 digital PR pros to assess the state of digital PR. It looks a lot like it did five years ago.
• Social media has overtaken television as Americans’ primary source of…

Not only are AI chatbots still hallucinating; by some accounts, it’s getting worse. Moreover, despite abundant coverage of the tendency of LLMs to make stuff up, people are still not fact-checking, leading to some embarrassing consequences. Even the legal team from Anthropic (the company behind the Claude frontier LLM) got caught.

Also in this episode:

• Google has a new tool just for…

A Columbia University student was expelled for developing an AI-driven tool to help applicants to software coding jobs cheat on the tests employers require them to take. You can call such a tool deplorable or agree with the student that it’s a legit resource. It’s hard to argue with the $5 million in seed funding the student and his partner have raised.…

It’s not just jobs that AI will affect. It’s the perception that employees have important expertise. After all, if AI can do the work, it’s easy to view employees’ special knowledge and experience as less important to the organization. Neville and Shel examine the steps communicators can take to continue to be viewed by leaders as subject matter experts who expertise brings value to the…

“We are once again at a moment in time where things will not — and cannot — be the same again. However it unfolds, the only certainty is chaos will follow.”

So wrote global PR practitioner Catherine Arrow in a post on LinkedIn. In this monthly longform episode, Neville and Shel discuss Catherine’s observation that communicators are caught in the thick of conflict in which…