In his latest article, James Clothier, Head of Crisis at Grayling, pinpoints another potential disaster zone for corporates: when artificial intelligence goes rogue.

When hackers attack, there is someone external to blame. But if a company’s AI starts being racist or sexist, mucks up the supply chain or lies without a whit of shame, it’s much harder to sympathise. Especially since AI is perceived to have taken a job from a human being.

Which is why preparing for this kind of crisis is so important. There was once a time when it was credible to suggest AI would free us to go become creative souls, liberated from the shackles of work. But nobody looks today at former industrial areas like Walsall, Rochdale or Rotherham and immediately thinks of their poets, their painters or their philosophers. Horses were not found better roles in society after the invention of the automobile.

Journalists use chatbots as much as the rest of us, and the media mood reflects this growing antipathy. When AI bruises the ego of a newspaper commentator by not knowing who she is, or frustrates the hell out of a reporter when he gets his phone stolen, they are going to seize any professional opportunity they can to kick it.

While business leaders are focused on scale and efficiency, the reputational damage when AI fails – publicly, awkwardly, and sometimes cruelly – is being underestimated.

AI is, at least for now, the colleague nobody wants, the face of a business no customer wants to see, and a looming headache for leaders.

It’s now time for comms professionals to catch up with the auditors, insurers and critics – and build preparedness for the moment AI stops being a promise and starts being a PR problem.

👉 Read the full article on PRWeek.