{"id":153076,"date":"2026-08-03T10:39:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T09:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=153076"},"modified":"2026-08-03T14:19:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T13:19:34","slug":"the-reality-of-building-an-ai-comms-strategy-for-regulated-industries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/the-reality-of-building-an-ai-comms-strategy-for-regulated-industries\/","title":{"rendered":"The reality of building an AI comms strategy for regulated industries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence is now a core operational reality<\/a> for PR and communications, but for those working in highly regulated environments, or those with clients that do, the challenge of using these tools effectively comes with an extra layer of complexity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To unpack what that means in practice, we were joined by three comms leaders from some of the UK’s critical infrastructure sectors for our latest webinar, ‘How to build an AI comms strategy: Lessons from regulated industries’.<\/p>\n

Watch the full webinar here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bringing insight and experience from the space, energy, transport, maritime, and aviation sectors were SSE plc<\/a>‘s Group Head of External Comms Ross Easton, First Rail London<\/a>‘s Communications Manager Dana Raer, and Viasat<\/a>‘s Senior Communications Manager Richard Jones.<\/p>\n

Together, the panel explored how comms strategies are shifting under the weight of AI and LLMs; the realities of getting buy-in in regulated sectors; why the human touch still can’t be replicated; and what all of this means for earned media and crisis communications.<\/p>\n

‘Google it’ or ‘AI it?’ How the emergence of AI and LLMs has changed comms strategies<\/h2>\n

For Richard, the first major shift concerns the sheer volume and noise of information, and filtering through the avalanche of content being shared:<\/p>\n

‘We’re all having to factor in much more mass-produced AI content that companies are putting out, but also that journalists are receiving – there’s a lot more AI content, and pitches being delivered by automated AI systems’.<\/p>\n

Journalists are being inundated with AI-generated contributions via AI-powered outreach, and the digital landscape is saturated. This brings extra challenges for comms professionals tasked with managing and protecting the flow of correct information. Adding to this obstacle is AI’s new role as an informational gatekeeper. Where audiences would ‘Google it’ if they needed information, people are now ‘AI’ing it’ instead.<\/p>\n

‘The way that we track and monitor is changing to deal with the inconsistencies or incorrect information that LLMs are sharing with customers, stakeholders, and regulators,’ explained Richard. And the risk of incorrect narratives doesn’t just come from outside of organisations – comms teams themselves must be cautious about what they\u2019re putting out into the world:<\/p>\n

‘My sector is not only highly regulated, but very highly technically complex. We have a fleet of satellites around the world and deal with a lot of highly sensitive, secure projects for governments. Absolutely, we want to accelerate our use of AI. But we also have to do it in a careful way – comms itself has much more of a responsibility now.’<\/p>\n

Sharing a perspective from the energy sector, Ross framed the shift around changing audience behaviour:<\/p>\n

‘A statistic from Bain & Company<\/a> found that about 80% of consumers now rely on AI written summaries for about 40% of their searches.<\/p>\n

‘You’ve got to be optimising your content for those Large Language Models.’<\/p>\n

\"Bain<\/p>\n

That means paying attention to channels that might previously have been overlooked:<\/p>\n

‘You’re paying much more attention to things like Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is a source that AI will go to and find information’.<\/p>\n

For Ross, it’s also about legacy content: SSE is rebuilding its website while managing an archive of news. He advises comms teams to think about ‘what is on your web estate, and who is saying what about you’.<\/p>\n

Dana mentioned LinkedIn as another useful source for LLMs, and emphasised the importance of an organisation’s own communications and messaging. Even though First Rail London doesn’t rely on its website to drive business (‘we are the operator of the London Overground… people come to us directly’), AI is factoring this website content into its answers:<\/p>\n

‘If the public are asking ChatGPT about the London Overground and if the service is good, I have to include LLMs as a way to monitor perception. I’m doing my own audits of Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude.’<\/p>\n

Is it a challenge to get buy-in on AI from internal stakeholders in regulated industries?<\/h2>\n

Dana didn’t hesitate: ‘I don’t think there is a need for buy-in. Everyone’s sold, to be honest. There’s not much need for convincing’.<\/p>\n

Her approach, from a comms perspective, has been incremental: ‘speeding up processes, getting them in my workflows, briefing all people or employees on what we can do, what we cannot do. Just this morning, I saw a news story about people sharing Google Docs on Anthropic Claude and them appearing later on in Google searches… it’s such an unregulated sector that you really have to be careful what you put out there’.<\/p>\n

Richard agreed on internal stakeholder appetite for AI innovation, in his sector \u2014 ‘I don’t really remember a colleague internally saying, “I don’t like to use that AI stuff”‘ \u2014 but pointed to a deeper change in the comms function itself:<\/p>\n

‘Previously, with any kind of new software, it would be a comms team asking the IT team, can we just roll this out faster? But now, it’s important for us to be the reputational managers and raise these internal questions of how we should be using it. Thinking about potential reputational risks – that’s our job.’<\/p>\n

Ross was more cautious on whether or not everyone is sold on AI optimisation in the energy sector: ‘Definitely not’.<\/p>\n

SSE has policies restricting external tools and sensitive data, alongside GDPR considerations, and uses a protected internal tool instead. The more significant internal challenge is guidance, not access:<\/p>\n

‘I think the bigger challenge internally is showing people how to use AI in the best possible way. AI is there as a guide for us in the same way that a sat nav is to a London cabby. It’s not there to replace our knowledge, or our experience.’<\/p>\n

His team utilise internal agents that review tone of voice on press releases before they go out, but Ross stressed: ‘It’s not rewriting it for them, but acting as a coach’.<\/p>\n

AI can’t replicate the ‘human touch’ \u2014 how vital is authenticity?<\/h2>\n

For Dana, authenticity is an intrinsic part of communicating for a public service network:<\/p>\n

‘Trust, in general, is really hard to win, but it can be lost so easily through one comment to the media.’<\/p>\n

She was direct about the limits of AI-generated tone in a crisis:<\/p>\n

‘It requires empathy. You need common sense and good judgement, and that comes from years of experience that the AI platforms don’t have. AI is fantastic to draft that first blank page, but it cannot take responsibility for the final one.’<\/p>\n

Richard advised not underestimating the public’s capacity to spot AI work: ‘You must act as though your audience is highly intelligent because the likelihood is they are’.<\/p>\n

He described the ‘sandwich approach’ to AI taken at Viasat \u2014 human direction, AI-driven legwork, human review.<\/p>\n

On developing the next generation of PR professionals in an AI-first world, Ross was clear that experience-sharing can’t be automated away:<\/p>\n

‘Time investment is so important, particularly for people new into a career. This really needs to be something that we focus on as AI takes over a lot more of workplace life.’<\/p>\n

What does this mean for media outreach?<\/h2>\n

Dana highlighted Google’s continuing influence, despite the wide shift to ‘AIing’ for information:<\/p>\n

‘There are about 10 Google searches for one AI query… for now, most people still Google more.’<\/p>\n

But she was equally clear that AI and LLMs rely heavily on earned media, also pulling heavily from organic content, websites, and LinkedIn. She raised a note of caution on the latter, however\u2026<\/p>\n

‘The language people use on LinkedIn has become very similar and repetitive. Many journalists are steering clear of LinkedIn as a source at the moment’. She added that many journalist contacts are ‘really reluctant to use any form of AI’ themselves, and equally reluctant to work with PR professionals who lean on it too heavily.<\/p>\n

On how AI is impacting the media, Ross sees a silver lining for a subsector that has been struggling for over a decade now: local media. A category PR and comms professionals shouldn’t overlook\u2026<\/p>\n

‘AI is giving a kind of renewal to those local outlets, because their content is being picked up, and often it’s not behind paywalls’. He anticipates more licensing deals between publishers and AI providers as a business model, concluding: ‘I do think that earned media is still a really important place to invest time and effort, absolutely’.<\/p>\n

Richard agreed that trusted, established outlets will also only grow more valuable:<\/p>\n

‘Your BBC, your Guardians, your Financial Times – those with really high levels of awareness will become more important and more trusted, because people will have less trust for other news sources.’<\/p>\n

He was careful to frame AI visibility as just one KPI among several:<\/p>\n

‘The BBC might help me with GEO, but I still want to show up in those publications because that gets to actual humans directly – actual humans still read the BBC.’<\/p>\n

How does AI factor into crisis communications?<\/h2>\n

Dana cited a stark statistic on crisis: a BBC and EBU study<\/a> found that ‘45% of AI responses to news questions had at least one significant issue’.<\/p>\n

\"BBC<\/p>\n

Her position on using AI in a crisis was staunch: ‘For crisis communications, I’ll never recommend using AI. You’re speaking to people and people want to hear from people’.<\/p>\n

Richard pointed to a coming shift in how crisis statements need to be written, given how audiences now seek information: ‘A lot of your customers will immediately be opening their phones and saying to their favourite AI platform, “What’s going on with the trains? What’s going on with Viasat satellites, what’s going on with SSE?”‘<\/p>\n

This has real implications for internal education, particularly with senior leaders and colleagues who may be less familiar with AI platforms and how they’re best used:<\/p>\n

‘You don’t want to wait until the issue or the crisis happens to raise that point. Make sure there’s alignment on it and agreement on it, so that everyone’s on the same page of what we’re trying to do.’<\/p>\n

Watch the full webinar here<\/a>, and find out more about media outreach in the age of AI in our Vuelio report ‘The role of AI, LLMs, and earned media in shaping reputation<\/a>‘. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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