The impacts AI may have on your role as a communicator
While AI won’t replace strategic communicators, it will quickly replace purely transactional comms work. So when you hear the infamous: “Will AI replace my comms job?”, it may not be an entirely unreasonable question.
However, it’s definitely too simplistic. Generative AI can now draft your CEO email, write your change narrative, summarise your engagement survey results and repurpose that town hall into six social posts before you’ve finished your coffee, but, it’s not coming for your comms role. It’s replacing the low-value and time consuming work and tasks. These are not the same thing!
Think of it like this; if your role is primarily:
Drafting first versions
Formatting updates
Rewriting leadership notes
Turning slides into intranet posts
Producing high volumes of content on request
Then yes, AI can already do most of that, but doesn’t mean communicators are obsolete. It means the production layer of the role is being commoditised, and this means the value of your role shifts. Ultimately, the question becomes: “What part of my role is truly strategic?”
Communication has never been about typing
Strong communicators aren’t just writers, they interrogate the behind the scenes of every message. They ask:
Why are we saying this?
Why now?
Who wins if this lands well?
Who loses if it doesn’t?
What’s the unintended consequence?
What are we not saying?
So while AI can generate the language used, it can’t sit in a leadership meeting and sense that the CFO is hedging, or remember last year’s failed restructure. It can’t anticipate how a union delegate will interpret a single misplaced word or even feel organisational fatigue. Which is why communication is so critical - it’s the context behind the content, not just the creation of the content itself.
The risk is rising, not falling
Here’s the paradox: as AI makes it easier to create content, the risk of poor communication increases because:
Leaders can now generate their own messaging (without checking for context).
Speed can override reflection.
Generic language becomes normalised.
Nuance gets flattened.
Volume increases, clarity decreases.
In that environment, organisations don’t need fewer communicators, but more strategic ones. They need people who hold accountability and:
Challenge assumptions
Protect reputation
Shape narrative intentionally
Advise on timing
Coach leaders through complexity
This is a positioning moment
The communicators who will thrive in the next five years are the ones who:
Build AI literacy instead of resisting it
Use AI to remove low-value work
Step further into strategic advisory
Strengthen business acumen
Develop coaching capability
Set governance and ethical guardrails
The uncomfortable truth
Some communication roles may disappear, but not because communication isn’t important. Mostly because production without strategy is replaceable and organisations won’t pay senior communicators for word count. They pay for scrutiny of content, judgment and risk management, influence, trust and stakeholder management.
So, will AI replace your comms job?
If your job is primarily transactional, parts of it already are. If your job is strategic, relational and grounded in influence, it’s about to become more important because we aren’t shifting from human to machine. We are simply moving at pace, and yes, AI can generate words in seconds. What it can’t do is build credibility over years, carry political awareness, repair broken trust or even something as simple as: read the room.
