The reinvention of communication

Many people remember historic events such as September 11, 2001, but November 30, 2022 is less present: the date on which ChatGPT-3 became available to the public. Just five days later, the platform already had over one million users. This marked the start of the commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI).

Since then, AI has fundamentally changed the way we work – through automation, better decision-making and increased efficiency. According to the AG CommTech survey, 71% of respondents rate the benefits of generative AI as “great” or “very great” – and more than half of us use generative AI occasionally, 38% even on a daily basis. At Swiss Re, more than 86 percent of our employees use AI in their day-to-day work.

The rapid pace of development is exciting, but also challenging. Especially when developing your own AI applications, you are often overtaken by progress: What barely worked yesterday may be solved tomorrow. AI helps to make our value chain more efficient – and also to rethink it. One example is the development from SEO to GAIO and the question of what role our website will play (as part of our value chain) if users soon consume our content directly in the respective AI tools. Or the question of training in communication: how will we learn the basics of our craft in the future if tools are already operating at the level of best practices?

Governance, upskilling, AI development

We have been working intensively on these (and other) questions for a year and a half. In March 2023, we founded our AI Working Group, an interdisciplinary team that coordinates the strategic management and introduction of AI in corporate communications. At the beginning, the focus was primarily on ethical issues, such as our own professional role in an AI-augmented world, which is why we are committed to the “human-in-the-loop” principle. And a specially developed “AI charter” sets out goals and principles for the responsible use of AI.

At the same time, we are dedicated to developing important skills. We organize drop-in sessions in which we continuously learn from each other. After all, 80 percent of all digital transformations fail due to a lack of change management and upskilling. The successful implementation of AI depends not least on how we integrate the technology into our everyday lives. Learning topics include, for example, prompt engineering and the use of AI to increase creativity.

On our AI journey, we are also working on the development of generative AI that is adapted to our needs. We differentiate between development within existing platforms and the development of customized solutions. We integrate AI functionalities into our Content Management Suite or our analytics platforms to automate or accelerate process steps.

We have also developed our own AI solutions, such as the “Social Media Helper” – an application based on ChatGPT 4.0 that generates social media posts in line with our brand style. It is no coincidence that we were the first to focus on text generation: In the AG CommTech survey, 90 percent of AI users said they use AI to produce text. Text generation using AI not only helps us to be more efficient, but also to improve the quality of our content. We are trying to develop in a platform-agnostic way by working with different LLMs or building solutions that can be based on several LLMs.

What the future holds

Where our AI journey will take us remains to be seen. Like everyone else, we are dependent on technological developments. But this should not stop us from actively shaping our future. AI offers the opportunity to redefine communication and marketing and increase our added value: if we use AI to speed up or automate routine tasks, we have more time for value-adding work, for example for creation, stakeholder engagement or strategy and conception. Like any transformation, AI also harbors risks. We consciously deal with these by openly discussing the pros and cons internally. With a culture of openness and learning, we ensure that we fully exploit the possibilities of AI. In our opinion, the biggest risk is not using AI and thereby missing the boat (and competitive advantages). Ultimately, it’s about seeing AI as a tool that supports us and not as a threat. Only then can we fully exploit the opportunities that this technology offers us – and perhaps even manage to reinvent communication (to some extent) in the process.

Dr. Jan Dietrich Müller, Head Group Communications, Managing Director at Swiss Re