8/5/26 – – Last week we learned a UK-based PR firm was using AI not only to draft story ideas for journalists, but to create the publicists who pitched them. The AI-generated personas, with fake names and head shots, were discovered by a tech-savvy writer at Futurism.com who received the proposals.
I don’t foresee an AI apocalypse on the horizon. But this troubling evidence of AI dependence and misuse within my own profession inspired me to write this cautionary verse (and share it on LinkedIn):
In AI We Trust
By Christopher Tennyson
There was a time not long ago
When thoughtful tasks were hard and slow.
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It took some time to write a friend
With words so kind a heart could mend.
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Expressed in songs and legal briefs
Were new ideas and strong beliefs.
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Books were read from front to end
You turned each page to comprehend.
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Then came our friend we call AI
No longer did we have to try.
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Questions, dreams and our discoveries
Machines replaced with instant summaries.
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Why draft a poem, speech or play
When AI tells us what to say.
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An em dash here an em dash there
And words appear from who knows where.
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There were concerns at AI’s start
That minds would cease to be as smart.
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But thoughts and brains are overrated
Compared with what AI created.
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Learning’s not a human trait
In AI’s hands we’ve left our fate.
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We’re headed down a better path
Replacing doubt with prompts and math.
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We trust this is the way to go
Our friend AI has told us so.
Crisis Quotient Blog 