From content creators to strategic advisors: Upskilling communicators in the age of AI

Ryan Cangialosi is assurance & sustainability communications leader at PwC. 

The communications profession has always evolved with technology — from fax machines to email, from press clippings to social listening, from one-way broadcasts to two-way engagement. As we now look at AI, it isn’t just another tool — it’s redefining what it means to be a communicator.

At PwC, our communications team has been an early adopter. Today, our adoption rate sits at 98%. We didn’t get there by mandate but by building custom solutions, encouraging experimentation and even running competitions to spark creative use cases. The result? AI has become a companion in our daily work — helping us draft faster, analyze smarter and open new possibilities for how we serve the business.

Why upskilling matters now

Yes, AI makes us efficient. It can summarize meetings, draft copy or crunch insights in seconds. But stopping at productivity gains misses the real transformation. Communicators also need to understand the broader AI ecosystem:

• How generative models and LLMs are reshaping press release distribution and media relations.
• How search and SEO are being rewritten in an AI-driven discovery world.
• How AI tools can be built — not just used — to expand our scope and deliver new services to the business.

These are just a few examples and are the tip of the iceberg. Upskilling isn’t just about teaching teams to prompt better. It’s about preparing them to connect AI’s capabilities with the organization’s biggest opportunities and risks.

The new communicator profile

Tomorrow’s communicator will look very different from yesterday’s.

• AI as a companion. Rather than competing with AI, communicators will embrace it to put time back in their day, surface insights faster and support creativity
• Timeless skills at the core. Strategy, storytelling, audience understanding, business acumen, creativity and judgment will remain the foundation of our craft
• Elevated expectations. By removing repetitive tasks, AI pushes communicators to step into bigger roles: advisor, strategist, connector of dots, innovator
• Storytelling reborn. Freed from the grind, communicators can return to what they do best: telling authentic, human stories

How to upskill practically

Too many organizations stop at encouragement: “Use AI in your work.” That’s not enough. Adoption without training can create uneven results, lack of trust and missed opportunities. Instead, leaders should invest in formal upskilling programs with clear use cases:

• Baseline literacy: drafting, editing, summarizing, bias-spotting
• Analytical layer: predictive insights, trend detection, stakeholder sentiment analysis
• Strategic integration: custom GPTs, solutions that expand the comms function and applying AI insights to executive counsel

Think of it this way: we don’t multiply numbers by hand — we use calculators. We don’t fax press releases or build media lists through manual research. AI should be built into our core expectations the same way.

A call to action for leaders

Here’s the truth: upskilling can’t be outsourced. Leaders need to own it.

Communicators are uniquely positioned to lead AI adoption — our work overlaps directly with content. We’re the natural test case for embedding AI across the enterprise. But to lead effectively, we need to build AI literacy into the DNA of our teams. A few examples include:

• Formal training programs that go beyond encouragement to expectation.
• Clear standards for where AI should (and shouldn’t) be used.
• Celebration of innovation — competitions, showcases and experiments that normalize creativity.

Upskilling isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s how we future-proof our teams and elevate our roles.

Communicators have a choice: treat AI as a shortcut or embrace it as a catalyst. One path leads to being sidelined as a content machine. The other leads to a seat at the decision-making table — bigger, stronger and more influential than ever. Which path we choose will define the next decade of our profession.