✅ Monday briefing #12: AI bias, hype and creativity, search alerts, lockdown lookup tool, BAME voices, dark social primer, and freelance talent
Artificial intelligence, tools and technology, must read, industry, and living with COVID-19
Good morning. My name is Stephen Waddington. This is a weekly summary of news from my blog and topics discussed in a community of practice that I run on Facebook. You’d be welcome to join us. My thanks to all the contributors.
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Artificial intelligence
⬛ BIAS: Educator and technologist Colin Madland shared an example of how pervasive bias is in software. In this instance Zoom erases black faces when using virtual backgrounds. It gets worse. Twitter defaulted to Madland’s own white face alongside his black colleague when he posted about the issue. Spotted by Paul Clarke.
🎨 CREATIVITY: If a computer creates an image is it art? ART AI is a project started at Cambridge University by a group of AI and art enthusiasts. It is intended to democratise the conversation about machine creativity. Images start at $40, so it’s not entirely democratic. Spotted by Rod Cartwright.
💥 HYPE: Golin's Jonny Bentwood in Techerati on AI in PR: it's overhyped, most is machine learning or automation, but useful for making sense of large amounts of data such as sentiment analysis or relevance. Spotted by Stephen Waddington.
Tools and technology
⚠️ SEARCH ALERTS: I'm working with the team at AnswerThePublic on a fascinating project to explore an application of the tool for issues, crisis, and emergency response. Search alerts are a new feature that report on how the public is searching for a term. Source Stephen Waddington.
📍 LOCAL LOCKDOWN LOOKUP: Matthew Somerville has built a web tool using the MapIt API to query lockdown data by postcode. It links to official guidance from the UK government website. Spotted by Stephen Waddington.
🔧 INTEGRATED TOOL: Facebook has launched an integrated tool for anyone managing a campaign across Facebook and Instagram. It enables campaigns to be planned, posted and measured across both platforms. I know, what took so long? Spotted by Alan Morrison.
📥 INBOX DECLUTTER: RSS reader Feedly enables you to sign up to a newsletter with a unique email address and receive it in your Feedly account. The service added a research AI tool called Leo earlier in the year to prioritise incoming content. Spotted by Stuart Bruce.
💲 PROWLY DEAL: SEMRush has acquired PR CRM and online newsroom tool Prowly. Prowly will continue to operate as a stand-alone brand but will be integrated into the SEMrush platform. Prowly CEO Joana Drabent said its next goal was to tackle measurement. Spotted by Stuart Bruce.
Must read
🧡 BAME PR VOICES: The latest #FuturePRoof book is a takeover by the BAME PR community. A series of essays cover a range of contemporary public relations issues from coaching to recruitment and from behavioural insight to community management. Source: Sarah Waddington.
💯 BOTTOM FEEDING: Digital advertising is a race to the bottom and coupled with media fragmentation makes it hard to build a modern brand according to Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman. Do you think Donald Trump would be president if The Apprentice had been a webinar? Spotted by Nigel Sarbutts.
⚫ DARK SOCIAL PRIMER: What Every PR Needs to Know About Dark Social is the title of a primer published by Releasd. It reckons that it represents the biggest shift in communications since the digital revolution and that as much as 84% of content can’t be tracked. Source: Releasd sponsored link.
📰 TACKLING DISINFORMATION: The New York Times has launched a US election feature called Daily Distortions, in which journalists debunk misinformation that has gone viral. In the past week it has tackled George Soros fake fires, and Qanon, among others. Spotted by Alan Morrison.
Industry
📱 PUBLIC SECTOR COMMUNITY: Headspace is a thriving 5,000 member Facebook group created by Dan Slee in 2016 for public sector communicators. It’s a safe and supportive place when members discuss share best practice and career support. Source Dan Slee.
💻 JOB CREATION: Radioactive PR has created a collective of 18 businesses in Gloucestershire to create 35+ jobs via the Government Kickstarter scheme. The PRCA aims to do the same UK wide for the PR industry. Spotted by Stephen Waddington.
💼 FREELANCE TALENT: The PR industry fails to use freelance talent to help it scale or for specialist work. It’s also backwards and fails to be transparent with clients about its use of freelance resource. This is the view of the PR Cavalry’s Nigel Sarbutts and a recent article in Forbes. Spotted by Nigel Sarbutts.
Living with COVID-19
🏢 OFFICE LIFE: Agency life will never be the same after COVID-19. Stickybeak's latest poll for Provoke finds that less than 50% of teams to return to the office before the end of the year, and that a mix of home and office working will be optimal for the future. Source Maja Pawinska Sims.
📶 WI-FI EXTENSION: If you’re struggling with home wi-fi invest in a mesh network. The Netgear Orbi and TP-Link Deco P9 are both recommended. The TP-Link system enables devices to be prioritised on the network. Think laptop versus the family TV or Nintendo switch. Source: Howard Walker.
