USC Annenberg: The Relevance Report 2024

The USC Center for Public Relations’ annual Relevance Report identifies emerging issues and forecasts topics and trends that will impact society, business and communications in the coming year. The 2024 report contains almost 40 contributions from leading representatives of the PR industry as well as academics and students at USC. While the report has covered a variety of topics in the past, this year’s 8th report focuses exclusively on AI to understand how the technology will impact the future of the communications industry.

A key finding of the report: while in 2019 only 18% of PR professionals believed that AI would be an important part of their business in the future, this year the figure was as high as 80%. However, as AI becomes more prevalent in the communications industry, challenges arise in terms of accuracy, security, transparency, ownership and privacy. These questions need to be clarified in order to ensure the responsible and ethical use of AI. However, the report also shows that the experience gained from integrating AI into communications will have a profound impact on the efficiency, creativity and effectiveness of PR professionals. If you would like to find out more, you can download the report free of charge.