Why PR Must Step Forward in the Fight Against AI Swarms, Synthetic Influence and Mass Deception

Save the date: On the next Strategies & Tactics Live, join Michael Cherenson, APR, Fellow PRSA, and Mark J. McGrath for insights on how communicators can lead in the fight for truth, trust, and public perception. Watch live on LinkedIn on June 26 at 1 p.m. ET. Registration information to follow.

The battlefield isn’t coming. It’s here.

A landmark international study — backed by Oxford, MIT, NYU and Cambridge — has confirmed what many in our profession already sensed. We’ve entered the era of autonomous influence. Malicious AI swarms — coordinated, self-learning systems of generative agents — can now flood the infosphere with believable lies, impersonate trusted voices and manipulate public sentiment in real-time.

This isn’t misinformation. This is weaponized narrative.

And it moves faster than our institutions were designed to respond.

Scholars have proposed watchdogs, content filters and technical safeguards. Necessary and urgent — yes — but, ultimately, insufficient. This threat doesn’t emerge from a single source or follow a predictable script. It adapts. It scales. It learns. And it’s already bypassing every static defense we’ve built.

We’re not up against a fire to contain. We’re facing an organism.

The old models — fact-checking after the fact, crisis response after the blow — no longer cut it. What’s needed isn’t a bigger firewall. It’s a functioning immune system: one that detects distortion at the point of entry, makes meaning under pressure and responds before the signal is lost.

This is where public relations comes in.

PR has long claimed to be the voice of trust, the steward of credibility, the bridge between institutions and the public. Now is the time to prove it. We are not just storytellers — we are architects of perception. We operate where orientation happens: in the minds of people, in the spaces between message and meaning.

But to meet this moment, we must evolve.

Telling the truth is essential — but sadly, no longer enough. In an age of deepfakes, deniability and the liar’s dividend, facts alone can’t carry the weight they once did. We must build inoculation, not just explanation.

Transparency isn’t enough. Audiences demand coherence and context. We must frame reality before others fabricate it.

Speed isn’t enough. We must anticipate the maneuver — not just react to it.

PR professionals must be retrained — not just in media relations and brand strategy, but also in narrative warfare, perception management and information system dynamics. PR educators must move beyond the relics of 20th-century case studies and prepare students to operate in an environment where nothing stays still — where the message mutates, the medium manipulates and the messenger may not even exist.

This evolution requires cross-disciplinary collaboration. Behavioral scientists, cognitive linguists, OSINT analysts, ethicists and seasoned communicators must work side by side. The research exists. The tools are here. The frameworks are in place. What’s missing is integration — and the will to lead.

Let’s be clear: This is not an abstract threat. It’s not on the horizon. It’s operational now. The question isn’t whether we’re impacted. It’s whether we’ll act in time.

The era of PR as a support function is over.

We are now on the front lines.

This is the fight for trust, coherence, and cognitive freedom.

And it’s ours to lead — or lose.

Michael Cherenson, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the executive vice president of SCG Advertising + Public Relations. He served as PRSA’s chair and CEO in 2009. Mark J. McGrath is the chief learning officer of AGLX North America,

Illustration credit: sidewaypics 

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