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Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a commonplace not only in the retail, service and manufacturing industry but also as a part of everyday life. Language-based assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa and algorithms used on news sites and e-commerce platforms are a reality today. The AI Index 2018 Report published by Stanford University identified increasing numbers of patents on AI technologies, more and more job openings that demand AI skills and a rising favourable mass media coverage of AI related topics. The report also reveals that AI continues to evolve as a trending field in academia, with rising numbers of conferences, course enrolments and academic research on AI and its implications in different disciplines (Shoham et al., 2018).
It can be assumed that AI will also impact the fields of communication management. Industry magazines and consultants already highlight a broad variety of possible AI applications in the field, ranging from analytics to targeting, from content creation to chatbots and from evaluation routines to strategy development and crisis management—just to list a few (Foldes, 2018; Petrucci, 2018). The professional discourse frames AI technologies mostly as an addition to professional activities, emphasising its opportunities but also claiming that humans “cannot be replaced or mimicked by technology” (Foldes, 2018).
A perspective of particular interest on this might be one that considers the experiences of the communication professionals themselves. How knowledgeable are they about AI? To what extent have they already adapted to this technology? And how do they perceive the challenges and risks that AI might bring to the profession?
In this research article, we will conduct a literature review on AI in communication management and present results of a quantitative study among 2,689 practitioners in Europe that addresses those questions.
Theoretical background
We follow a two-step approach to outline our theoretical background and to present the current state of the research: First, we will unpack what we mean by AI referring to the literature in the field of the business information and computer science literature. After that, we will introduce the concept of communication management and review research on AI in this particular discipline. Combining both lines of thought will identify research gaps that are addressed in the empirical study.
Defining artificial intelligence
The...