Credibility and organizational reputation perceptions of news releases produced by artificial intelligence

Purpose Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers exciting opportunities for public relations practitioners in content production, but negative perceptions of this emerging technology may present challenges. This study provides evidence for how audiences relate the use of AI to the credibility and reputation of an organization using this emerging technology to write news release content. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a two (source: human vs. AI authored) by three (strategy: sympathetic vs. informational vs. apologetic) experiment. Findings Human authors of news release content are still perceived to be more effective across perceptions of source credibility, message credibility and organizational reputation. Participants' ratings did not differ in credibility or reputation when comparing situational crisis communication theory message strategies. Originality/value These results provide additional support for scholarship highlighting reputational challenges to organizations hoping to create news release content using AI tools.