Until recently, a significant part of a designer’s job was knowing how to use photo editing, vector illustration, and editorial design software. I spent so many hours in Photoshop courses, where seeing my classmates achieve the same result through different paths amazed me as much as it scared me that time would erase that knowledge. How many notes and screenshots have I accumulated to remember how to use the grids system or adjust the text to the base grid in InDesign?

The arrival of YouTube tutorials on how to use these tools meant we no longer had to memorise the processes, menus and submenus of these design software tools. From then on, it was enough to remember what the tools could do, NOT how to do it. If you needed to perform a specific action, you no longer had to go to forums to ask questions or consult the user manual. All you had to do was find a tutorial that explained it visually in a minute.

This has allowed more users to lose their fear to complex software. And the proliferation of Instagram reels that attractively explain how to create a photographic effect, a specific vector illustration style, or an editorial design based on the golden ratio.

The power of the free tools

The design tools available from a simple web browser are becoming increasingly powerful. They do not require us to download anything (with the risk of it containing a virus) and are accessible from any device.

Ilovepdf provides us with options that previously required paid software.

Background remover surprised us at its moment with a feature that you could only get by paying a fee.

What can we say about Photopea? A suite of free photo editing tools, fully functional that offers an interface similar to Photoshop (in exchange for showing us advertisements in the right-hand panel).

The use of Turboscribe for audio transcription is essential. Its option to add time stamps (indicating the minute and second when each sentence is spoken) has been extremely useful for synchronising subtitles. This feature has recently been incorporated into free video editing programmes.

Jitter has allowed us to create professional animations without mastering complex motion graphics programmes.

TikTok knows that we all prefer well-edited videos with beautiful transitions, sound effects, and eye-catching subtitles. That’s why it created CapCut, with powerful desktop versions, but also for mobile. It’s free software with paid options and a huge community behind it. I can’t fail to mention Trevor Jones, a video editing expert who has gone from working in Hollywood to focusing on a YouTube channel with thousands of subscribers, where he unravels all the secrets of CapCut’s timeline, keyframes, filters, effects, and settings in a fun and light-hearted style.

The war for the design pie

A war has broken out in all sectors to attract users, and in the field of design, Canva has led the revolution against Adobe’s monopoly. Initially criticised by some graphic designers who were “delighted to meet themselves”, Canva made its definitive mark with Affinity suite, a free software package (available for Mac, Windows and soon iPad) that combines photo editing, vector illustration editing and editorial design software in a single space. Three areas of graphic design for which Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, with their £80 monthly subscription, had been the industry standard until now. Among Canva’s new tools, its new portfolio creator and text summariser stand out.

Thousands of users have made the leap. Affinity Suite allows you to export to a .psd file or a vector PDF file with bleed and crop marks. This means there is no problem whatsoever in sending it to the printer or sending a project with layers to a colleague who works with another system.

This leap involves learning to use a new tool, after years of being accustomed to the menus and submenus of Adobe programmes. Had this steep learning curve occurred at another time, it would have put many people off. But nowadays, all you have to do is ask Gemini or ChatGPT how to select multiple layers at once, how to convert an image to a vector, or how to make a clipping mask, and you’ll get the answer instantly.

Canva has seen Affinity Studio as an opportunity to expand its user network and bases its business model on paid artificial intelligence features. However, the price of its PRO subscription is much lower than Adobe’s.

Apple also wants its slice of this pie and has just launched a subscription to Apple Creator Studio for 13 euros per month.

The ubiquitous artificial intelligence

Our capacity for amazement knows no bounds when it comes to generative AI. Gone are those hallucinations and that ‘dreamlike’ texture of images. A few months ago, there was no way to get the character created for one image to be used in the next, maintaining its appearance but in a different position. A few months of Google Nano Banana and ChatGPT competing for the throne have been enough for us not only to be able to do this, but now all we need is a photo of a character to ask the AI to show it to us in any setting, in any pose and from any angle. We no longer need a long photo shoot with lots of photos of a client to ensure that the creative content we produce for their social media is not monotonous.

Zara itself has confirmed that, although it continues to use real photographers and models, continues to use photographers and models in real life, it uses generative AI to generate to get the multitude of versions it needs.

Now more than ever the highest value of the graphic designer is his judgement. “Common sense,” as Jorge Álvarez Naveiro says in the first episode of the eighth season of our podcast.

All creative people have suffered from imposter syndrome at some point. This psychological pattern occurs when professionals, despite having obvious achievements, doubt their abilities and feel that they do not deserve their success, fearing that they will be exposed as ‘frauds’. Everyone knows how to write. Does that make us all potential journalists or novelists? If anyone could cut their own hair or design their own clothes at the touch of a button, would the world be full of stylish hairstyles and fashionable neighbours? Or would it be a cacophony of absurdities?

Now the time has come when everyone has the tools to design simply by typing what they want (prompt) into a text input field on a website. But if you leave the design of your company in the hands of non-professionals, will we see a balanced, elegant and eye-catching style throughout? Or will it be a nightmare of Comic Sans Serif, garish colours and gigantic logos?

At present, in a field that affects us on a daily basis, AI specialising in presentation design continues to rely on proposals with short texts and striking images. This is not the case for most of our clients, who require extensive explanations on financial matters and do not have a tangible physical product such as a fizzy drink or dazzling jewellery.

What is undeniable is the invaluable assistance provided by tools such as the following in graphic design processes:

Brainstorming and idea generation: ChatGPT, ideogram

Product mock-ups: Pacdora y Kittl,

Hyperrealistic images:: Stable diffusion, Midjourney, Firefly y Nano banana

Choosing a colour palette: Coolors y Khroma

Upscaling images: Remini y Topaz Gigapixel AI

Visual graphics trends for 2026

With this brief overview of the advances we have tested, I look ahead to the new year and, without a doubt, my favourite trend for 2026 is liquid crystal. Apple initially implemented skeuomorphism in its mobile operating system (iOS), a visual system in which digital elements such as buttons and icons imitated their physical counterparts, using textures, shadows and details to make them look real. Over time, in order to optimise resources and bandwidth, it moved to flat design, led by Android (Google’s mobile operating system), a user interface marked by minimalism with simple, schematic icons. Now that mobile phones with high-performance processors are very popular and download speeds are fast, we are returning to a realistic style with Apple’s liquid glass (whose successful creator has joined Meta’s design team) and the resurgence of glassmorphism. Styles and fashions are not for everyone, and Apple had to backtrack and offer an iOS update with the option to switch from liquid glass to frosted glass, sacrificing visual spectacle for the sake of readability.

Other styles we have followed closely, but which we are unlikely to apply to more traditional clients who prefer a more timeless line, are: Digital Pastel (soft colours such as lavender and mint, mixed with blurred gradients that look like clouds or crystals), Retro-Medieval (ancient icons and Gothic letters mixed with metallic effects and futuristic neon lights) and Kinetic Typography (letters that stretch and deform as if they were liquid and occupy the entire composition).

But all this is in January 2026. With the relentless evolution of artificial intelligence and the brutal battle for our attention from social media, everything could change next week. What wonders does the future hold? We will continue to watch eagerly.

La entrada Graphic trends in communication 2026: new tools and AI bring out our inner artist se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

This integration of AI design and communication agencies is not about replacing humans with machines, but rather empowering designers with a tireless and ultra-fast ally. At the agency, we have experienced this transformation first-hand, especially with the generation of visual content for our blog and 3D images for our report covers and social media carousels.

The challenge of the abstract: visual identity with AI

Every graphic designer sometimes faces the challenge of illustrating concepts that are inherently complex and abstract. Terms such as public relations, digital marketing, or specialised communication are not easy to capture in a single, memorable image.

With the redesign of comma’s image, the agency decided that the featured images on our blog should be a manifesto of our philosophy: modern, conceptual and organic, even using technology. We decided to use AI to generate images that symbolised the sound waves of communication through different materials and textures, assigning a material to each of our main content categories:

• Content creation: watercolour, due to the artistic and improvised nature of the creative process.
• Communication training: porcelain, symbolising the process of transforming clay (raw knowledge) into finished beauty (polished skills) through a process of modelling and firing.
• Digital marketing: glitter, due to the urgent need to attract attention and the fleeting but necessary sparkle of online campaigns.
• Media relations: paper, honouring its traditional origins in the written press
• Public relations: marble, which evokes the seriousness, solidity and institutionality with which long-term relationships of trust are built.
• The agency: fungi, for their symbolism of being a living entity, interconnected beneath the surface (the mycelium), representing the organic and collaborative spirit of our agency.
• Specialised communication: The pearl texture inside an oyster, being a unique, highly valuable element, requires a cultivation process and specialisation to be found.

By associating each theme with a texture, we have created a unique visual language that has only been possible thanks to the versatility and synthesis capabilities of AI design. It is the perfect example of AI at the service of human creativity.

AI SEO: the intelligence of structure

The symbiosis between AI design and communication agencies goes beyond the visual; it impacts the visibility of our message. Artificial intelligence has become an essential ally for the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of our texts.

For a communications agency seeking to position itself, the structure of a post is as important as its content. AI helps us optimise this structure in a surgical manner:

• Inclusion of the target keyword phrase: AI helps us to insert our target keyword phrase (AI design and communications agency) naturally into the text, headings (subheadings) and body of the article, maintaining readability without overdoing it.
• Hierarchical structure: ensures that we use headings (H1, H2, H3) in a logical and hierarchical manner, making it easier for both users and Google crawlers to read.
• Optimised meta description: AI is capable of condensing the essence of the post into a concise and attractive meta description, complying with character limits and using SEO criteria to encourage clicks from search results.

Essentially, AI is our structural architect for SEO. It frees us from the mechanical and repetitive part of optimisation, allowing us to concentrate on what we do best: creating valuable content.

The decline of traditional tools?

The pace of advancement in AI tools is so fast that the reflections in this post, and the capabilities we celebrate today, will become obsolete in the near future. We need only look at examples such as the capabilities of Google Nano Banana (or similar AI plugins in browsers) or the new features of ChatGPT to perform tasks that until very recently were exclusive to advanced design software such as Photoshop o Illustrator.

The question is inevitable: Is this the end of traditional design tools?

The most accurate answer is: no, it is its evolution. AI does not replace Photoshop or Figma, but rather integrates into them as a layer of superpower. Designers no longer spend hours cutting pixels, manually vectorising or creating the plan, profile and elevation of an object; they delegate these tasks to AI and devote their time to conceptualisation, art direction and strategy. The traditional tool becomes the ecosystem where the designer, assisted by AI, executes their vision. AI accelerates production, allowing creativity to scale to new levels of ambition.

IA illustration: visual fatigue and the return of the line

The ability of AI to generate amazing results from a simple prompt or text instruction is undeniable. We have witnessed the explosion on social media of ART TOY-style portraits (of collectible figures), GIBLI-style portraits (with their traditional Japanese animation feel), or studio-lit photography-style portraits, all generated in seconds from a selfie.

This ease and democratisation of image generation raises a crucial question for the discipline of design in a communications agency: Isn’t it all the same?

AI, by its very nature, is trained using vast data sets (existing images). The result, while technically flawless, often shares a basic aesthetic, a flavour that, when overused, quickly leads to visual fatigue.

• The paradox of perfection: projects such as Adobe’s TurnTable, which can generate a 3D image of any object from a front-facing photo or drawing, demonstrate AI’s incredible ability to standardise production. However, when we see twenty examples of the same thing across social media, the initial impact fades. Technical perfection can become tedious.
• The impact of hand-made: I recently visited Javier de Juan’s exhibition of urban posters from the 1990s at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid. After months of visual overstimulation with AI-generated images, I was struck by the raw, real beauty of the hand-drawn illustrations. The irregular lines, the palpable texture, the imperfection of when the spacing between letters in titles was measured with a ruler… It all screamed uniqueness.

AI has taught us to value human imperfection. AI design is, inevitably, just another style, an aesthetic filter. A style that, if not handled judiciously and with strong art direction, leads to homogeneity.

The future: imitation vs. authenticity

The big question is: Will the manual style make a comeback? Or how long will it take AI to learn to imitate it?

The answer lies somewhere in between. Manual style, authenticity and handmade items will return as a safe haven, as a statement of exclusivity and rejection of standardisation. However, AI should not be underestimated. Developers are already training models to introduce controlled imperfection and simulate the complexity of manual strokes, uneven brush strokes or ink bleeding.

The key for designers in communications agencies is not to fight against AI, but to use it to transcend it. Use AI design to produce quick ideas, mock-ups and options, and then apply human intelligence, aesthetic judgement and art direction to inject that uniqueness that machines still cannot generate in a coherent and emotional way.

The marriage between AI design and communication agencies is not the end of the designer, but rather a tool that forces them to be more strategic, more artistic and, paradoxically, more human.

La entrada AI design se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

La realidad es que, de forma casi imperceptible, pero a una velocidad increíble, hemos ido dejando atrás el mundo analógico. Y quienes más rápido lo han hecho, hemos sido los de mi generación: la generación Z.

The hybrid generation: between two worlds

Those of us born between the late 1990s and early 2000s experienced a transition from analogue to digital. In a way, we are the first generation of digital natives (or at least their immediate predecessors), because we grew up alongside the development of today’s technology. Our childhood was marked by pencils, notebooks and filing cabinets, but our adolescence and adult life unfolded in a completely digital environment.

We learned to write with pencil and paper, to use school diaries, notebooks for each subject, filing cabinets full of folders… However, we soon discovered that these tools were only temporary. What seemed to be the norm was replaced by reminder apps. Google Drive became the new universal filing cabinet, and collaborative documents have gradually replaced the physical exchange of notes or writings.

Generation Z lives in a hybrid world, with one foot in each. We know what it was like to look up information in encyclopaedias or libraries, but we also know how to use ChatGPT to get any answer in seconds. We experience the excitement of developing photos from film rolls and at the same time manage our galleries on our mobile phones, including editing. These references not only marked our adolescence, they also map out the transition between one world and another. Each of them reflects how our routines, our consumption habits and, ultimately, our way of communicating have changed.

This duality makes us aware of what has been lost, but also of what we have gained. Perhaps that is why many young people are experiencing a partial return to analogue: they are going back to Kodak cameras, paper diaries and vinyl records. In my opinion, I don’t think this is empty nostalgia or a passing fad, but rather a search for balance between the digital and the ‘traditional’.

Communication in the age of immediacy

In this context, journalism and communication have also changed completely. Today, digital technology gives us immediate access to thousands of platforms, content and ways to connect with other people. All information is literally just a click away.

The problem is that this immediacy has become a constant bombardment that overwhelms us every day, especially on social media. Virality and the speed with which we consume content have left behind the printed newspaper and any tool that requires more than thirty seconds of our attention. They call it efficiency.

But that same speed brings with it risks: superficiality, misinformation, and the loss of messages in an endless ocean of stimuli. And we know it. My generation knows that it is very easy to be deceived, that social media is fertile ground for lies. At the same time, we also know that today people consume information in fifteen-second reels . That is why many creators have had to adapt to the consumption style of Gen Z and Alpha.

Paper, on the other hand, had something that digital still lacks: permanence and credibility. By leaving paper behind, we gained speed, but we sacrificed the pause for reflection that communication also needs.

Education in the age of AI

We must be aware that technological advances and the possible definitive replacement of paper are inevitable. That does not mean it is a negative thing, but it does mean accepting that we are most likely heading towards a 100% digital future.

In this scenario, the key is to adapt. As a society, we cannot allow part of the population to be left behind in this process. The digital divide is a real obstacle and poses a risk of exclusion for those who do not have sufficient access or training to function in the digital environment.

At the same time, we must not forget that new generations need to learn how to use technology responsibly. Artificial intelligence, for example, opens up a world of possibilities: it can help us to be more creative, more efficient and solve problems in unprecedented ways, but it can also pose risks if not used wisely. That is why it is essential to teach and educate in technology, encouraging critical thinking that allows us to take advantage of all the positive aspects without falling into the harmful ones.

Balance is difficult, but possible.

From my point of view, living with both analogue and digital technology has made my generation the best prepared to navigate any environment and adapt to any work situation.

In the end, growing up between analogue and digital has not been a disadvantage, but a gift. It gave us the opportunity to experience the best of both worlds: the calm of writing by hand and the adrenaline rush of endless scrolling scroll ; the wait for a developed film roll and the immediacy of an Instagram story. Perhaps that is why we value nuances so much, because we know what it means to lose them.

It’s not about choosing one or the other, but about finding the right balance. Knowing when speed is needed and when it’s worth taking a break. And, above all, remembering that behind all the screens, diaries and notebooks, there are always people, with our desire to communicate, to understand each other and to leave our mark.

La entrada Losing paper, embracing pixels. se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

From the Catalonian delegation of comma, we had the privilege to participate in this forum and to see how international agencies are applying this technological revolution in their day-to-day work, and the risks and challenges it poses from a social, moral and ethical point of view. At a time when 91% of US agencies are either using AI (61%) or exploring its use (30%), according to a Forrester study reported by Marketing Directo, it is essential to stop and reflect. Because, after the love affair between our sector and AI, the time has come to ask ourselves whether we can live with this technology, and on what terms. “In the last year, AI and the communication sector have been on a honeymoon,” noted Madelene Kornfehl, CEO of Cloudberry Communications AB, during the UPN meeting. “The challenge for the coming year is to structure the use of AI in our daily lives,” she concluded.

What do we use AI for?

Artificial intelligence has become an essential tool for streamlining processes in communication agencies, especially those that demand a lot of time and effort. Some of its most common applications are:

1. Complex data processing and analysis: AI facilitates the management of large amounts of information, speeding up the review of lengthy reports and enabling teams to make informed and teams to make informed and informed decisions in less time.
2. Simple reporting and KPI tracking: AI simplifies reporting by automating the collection and presentation of relevant data, allowing teams to focus on strategic analysis. With AI tools, it is possible to generate clear and customised reports that summarise the performance of campaigns, projects or any other activity based on previously defined KPIs, projects or any other activity based on previously defined KPIs.
3. Automated content generation: natural language processing (NLP) algorithms are able to produce personalised and compelling capable of producing personalised and convincing texts. These tools are becoming more and more crucial for the creation of creation of content like the one you are reading, bringing speed and flexibility to blogging and other communication resources.
4. Analysis of brand voice and tone against the competition: With AI , it is possible to accurately measure how a brand is perceived in comparison to others. brand is perceived in comparison to other brands, This allows you to adjust your communication strategies and improve your market positioning.
5. Social media sentiment monitoring: AI analyses in real time opinions about a brand, identifying areas for improvement and new opportunities, This allows us to react swiftly to any changes in public perception.

Artificial intelligence needs us today.

However, it is crucial to clarify that AI does not work magically or autonomously. It needs, first of all, human intelligence to provide it with precise instructions on what we want it to create and how we want it to execute it (either through prompts or GPTs). In addition, it requires our effort and time to be created, trained and adjusted to our needs. It is common to hear colleagues who have already advanced in the use of these tools complain that training an AI model takes almost as much time as performing the task manually. While there is some truth to this, it is important to emphasise that a well-trained model does end up saving a significant amount of time. However, the best results are obtained when we take the time to correct initial mistakes, teaching the prompt what we did not like, so that it learns from our modifications. In the long run, that extra effort is worth it.

The risks: the end of the human touch?

As with any relationship, after the love affair phase, we begin to notice the flaws, and the love affair between communication agencies and AI is no exception. Increasingly, voices are coming out of the initial enthusiasm and raising their hands to question the use of this technology. These professionals do not oppose AI, but stress the importance of understanding that it is not a messiah come to save our industry. Their focus is on responsible, ethical and considered use, where AI is applied only in situations where fundamental principles are not compromised and where the results are critically evaluated. Among these experts is Juha Frey, CEO of NetProfile, who during the UPN event warned about how “AI can cause us to lose the human touch”, as well as pointing out the inherent biases in AI models. On the other hand, Richard Fogg, CEO of CCGroup, emphasised the risks related to privacy and transparency, highlighting that “we handle confidential information from the corporations we work with. In this context, the misuse of AI could lead to security breaches”. In the face of these challenges, the question arises: Should we make public our basic principles on the use of AI asan exercise in transparency? the use of AI as an exercise in transparency?

Impact on critical thinking and young talent

The appropriate use of AI can free us from routine and repetitive tasks, allowing us to spend more time on creative activities. However, instant access to information and excessive delegation to AI can also have adverse effects. The president of the Spanish Brain Council and neurobiologist at the Center for Genomic Regulation, Dr. Mara Dierssen, warned: “If we use AI to write scientific papers, emails or summarise texts, our cognitive skills run the risk of weakening. By delegating information processing to AI, we lose opportunities to strengthen memory, which reduces our ability to think critically and solve problems independently”. This reflection highlights a significant risk: over-reliance on AI could compromise our cognitive capacity, diminishing our critical thinking and autonomous problem-solving skills. On top of this, AIs, by their nature, tend to rely on predefined patterns and may lack the ability to interpret the full context of a situation. ability to interpret the full context of a situation. This can lead to errors or inappropriate decisions, especially in complex situations that require human judgement. An additional challenge is the impact AI can have on the development of young talent within agencies. The danger of letting AI do the thinking for us, a trend that is particularly noticeable among less experienced professionals, the routine tasks that used to be part of the apprenticeship and and training of the sector ‘ s juniors, are now automated by AI, limiting their opportunities to gain practical experience. This raises the question of how the industry will be able to continue to train new generations of professionals when the tasks they used to do manually new generations of professionals when tasks that used to be done manually are now performed by machines, are now performed by machines.

Three additional dangers in the use of AI

1. Lack of transparency in decision-making: AI models often operate as a ‘black box’, where the decisions they generate are not fully understandable to users. This lack of transparency can lead to mistrust of outcomes and make accountability difficult, especially when decisions affect critical aspects of the of the business or the lives of customers.
2. Loss of creativity in content generation: although AI can generate content efficiently, there is a risk that prolonged use of these tools will lead to a loss of originality and creativity in messages. lead to a loss of originality and creativity in messages. The repetition of patterns learned by algorithms can homogenise communication and reduce innovation and originality in creative strategies. communication and reduce innovation and originality in creative strategies.
3. Technology dependency and vulnerability to failure: The increasing reliance on AI in day-to-day operations also creates vulnerability to technical failure. Any system error or cyber-attack affecting AI algorithmscould seriously compromise a company’ s algorithms could seriously compromise a company’s operations, from decision-making to the management of sensitive data.

What about the future?

The challenge for the future will be to strike a balance that allows us to take advantage of artificial intelligence the benefits of artificial intelligence without losing the human touch , and doing so in a way that is responsible to our organisations, our teams and our customers. AI is a powerful tool for automating processes and managing large volumes of information, but will not replace the ability of professionals to interpret situations, generate empathy and make decisions based on ethical values, generate empathy and make decisions based on ethical values. The goal is clear: smarter decisions, but always with humanity at the centre. As Kornfehl pointed out at the UPN event: “The challenge is to structure its use”. The important thing will be to find a way to coexist and integrate this technology in a sustainable way, ensuring that it complements our work without replacing what sets us apart as communicators.

La entrada AI in the communication sector: from honeymoon to coexistence se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

1.- Play, test, experiment

If you want to learn how toprompt(giving instructions to the AI), you have to writeprompts. There’s no point in watching hundreds of videos and downloading endless listings of prompts if you do not apply them. This is like languages: if you know all the grammar and then don’t dare to speak it, you won’t be able to communicate.

2.- Start with the generalist tools

ChatGPT, Google Bard, AI Bing. Start several conversations (which you can then save in your account) adopting different roles: one as a corporate communications expert, one as a crisis management expert, one as a social media manager… Ask questions by providing background information and precise instructions. Try them out prompts on the different tools and draw your own conclusions.

3.- Install AI extensions in your browser and on your mobile phone.

Merlin and You.com accompany you while you surf the Internet and help you summarise the main ideas of a web page or translate its content. With You.com you can chat via WhatsApp. Others like LuzIA and Carina IA (both Spanish) become your AI assistants via WhatsApp: they help you organise a trip, look up information or transcribe audios.

4.- Discover specific tools for corporate communication

PressPal.ai, by Muck Rack, writes press releases and suggests journalists to send the release to. It works in English and its database of journalists is mainly from the United States, but is improving every day.

For any task you can think of, you will find hundreds of tools that can help you. Don’t be overwhelmed: look for reviews, pick a couple and try them out. Little by little you will have your own TOP 10 of the must-have AI tools for your day-to-day life.

Integrate AI tools into your routine.

There is no point in being the Wikipedia of AI if these tools do not help you in your daily work. It’s not about using them all, but about choosing the ones that work best for you and help you with your tasks, and integrating them into your day. This way you will gain time to think and to do more strategic tasks. Define your AI diet and remember that bingeing is never good for you.

If you follow these 5 steps, you will soon have discovered the benefits of AI and identified the tools that make your life easier. You may even get used to working with them all the time. But let me make two final reflections:

• La IA todavía no te sustituye. It needs your cooperation to deliver good results. You are the thinking head who designs the prompts and the AI executes them. In addition, you will have to review the answers you are given to validate them and cross-check (do repromting) as many times as necessary. That is why your knowledge of strategic communication and your experience remain essential.
• Ethics and common sense are your choice.. AI are tools and it is up to you to decide how to use them. Be careful with the information you provide, especially if you work with free accounts, where you pay with your data and your usage (don’t forget that generative AI learns with you). Never enter sensitive information, as it may become part of the AI repository and appear in the results of the next user’s questions.

Now you have the ingredients you need to take action. You know: AI won’t take your job, but maybe another communication professional who knows how to use AI will.. So get on the AI train as soon as possible to make sure you don’t get left behind! And if you don’t want to make the journey alone, I’ll come with you!

*Post written by Cristina Aced, digital communication consultant and educator, founder of theschool of #LasImperdibles of communication

La entrada 5 tips to get up to speed on AI if you are a communicator se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

ChatGPT has broken down human horizons and the hype it has generated has been felt in the stock market but also in our everyday conversations; Although it is not an AI, as it is still blatantly failing in other areas – for example, basic computing – this platform represents a turning point in the 21st century and we may be witnessing one of the most important innovations in history.

In the field of communication, professionals are – let’s face it – a little alarmed. ChatGPT knows how to write formal speeches, has much more information to write opinion pieces – on any topic – and identifies a company’s key messages in the blink of an eye; The message from the industry was unanimous: “Calm down, ChatGPT will become an indispensable tool for consultants, but never a substitute”; Yes, well, perhaps fewer consultants are needed to accomplish the same task, and, in the next few years, a much more sophisticated platform than ChatGPT may emerge; It may be, and it is a guess, that this complacent and politically correct discourse implies a very different reality: that AI, still in development, is warming up on the bench ready to take the field to defeat and beat the communication consultants;

Some technologies based on deep learning have far surpassed us: in mathematics and statistics, in medicine – there are operations that can only be carried out by a robot because of the precision they require; in product development and manufacturing – you cannot produce an IPhone by hand – or even in safety in the automotive sector; Some AI experts believe that it is only a matter of time and that the natural trend is that it will gradually overtake us in all areas of human intelligence; However, although it will sweep us away in certain areas and improve human life in many respects, I suspect that some human realities will be insurmountable; I recognise that my knowledge of AI is still limited, but I believe that philosophy has a lot to say about it; Rather than asserting, I would like to raise several questions about the differences I see between AI and human intelligence. Among them, I would like to highlight the following: subjectivity, sensibility, rationality and temporality.

The AI is beating us, but does it experience victory?

Let’s go to the first one; On 11 May 1997, the Deep Blue computer beat world chess champion Garri Kasparov; an event that for some marked a before and after and evidenced a change of era. However, we have to wonder whether Deep Blue actually won the game, because, although technically it did, it did not have the experience of winning, it did not experience that sense of pride and satisfaction that comes with victory; What Deep Blue did not have was subjectivity, inner world and personal experiences; I think this will be an insurmountable difference, which, moreover, we can see very clearly in the reading; AI will be able to process text and ‘read’ much faster than we can; It will be able, for example, to accumulate all the philosophy books in the world, something unthinkable for a human being, given his limitations and time constraints; But the really important question is: what does AI mean by reading? Is it subjective? Is word processing the same as reading? Is reading the same as enjoying reading? Because reading and understanding is not, as we tend to think nowadays, about accumulating knowledge, but about assimilating and apprehending, i.e. making it one’s own; Reading a summary of Don Quixote de la Mancha is not the same as reading the whole book, because I may know who the characters are or what the story is about, but until I read it I am not able to follow the adventures of the nobleman, to dream what he dreamt and to fight, as he did, against the injustices of the world; Until I read it and live it, I will not be able to understand what is hidden in one of the most important classics of world literature; This experience is not a metaphor, but a very human reality; When we understand a character’s dilemmas, we also understand ourselves better and are able to see similarities between their problems and my own; Will AI be able to experience this?

A few years ago I was at a colloquium on reading; One university student asked why some teachers insist on reading and reading books when everything is already on the internet; As if human wisdom were a search and check of information, a management and processing of data! Wisdom, rather than accumulation, is assimilation; AI could do a lot of things, but it does not live and, in particular, it does not live organically;

Can an AI be sentient?

Secondly, sensitivity to the world; The word intelligence comes from the Latin verbintellegere, that means to read or know how to look between the lines; A person is intelligent when he or she is sensitive, gets to the bottom of an issue and brings it clearly to the surface; To cultivate intelligence, we need to get out of the screen and rediscover reality; They say the new Apple Vision Pro will revolutionise the way we look at the world, but it’s not about looking closer or looking further away, it’s about knowing how to look and knowing what to look at. As the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty said, “it is true that the world is what we see, and yet we must learn to see it”; This is the great challenge of philosophy, to explain and show the obvious, to squeeze out the depths of everyday life; AI will have a more accurate and millimetric eye on the world, but will see it as a place without obstacles and errors and subject to calculation, i.e. as a place that always responds without contingency; Its world is digital, not organic; The human being is an unknown – no one knows why we are here and why we are able to ask ourselves about the meaning of our lives; Can AI sense this uncertainty, this smallness that we experience in the face of the mystery that we are?

Sensitivity to the world can also be seen in communication; When we neglect language, when we do not take words like ‘democracy’, ‘justice’ or ‘respect’ seriously and use them lightly, we impoverish culture, resulting in a less free and understanding society; Philosophy, especially throughout the 20th century, reflected on how language influences reality; Aggressive and violent language is a sign of an aggressive and violent society; simplistic or populist language reflects a less democratic society; Therefore, without the care of the word there is no humanity, and the great civilisations were aware of the need to cultivate letters; George Orwell, in his famous work 1984, he already intuited that totalitarianism begins with a control of language and a falsification of the past. In short, language has a fundamental ethical dimension by which we guard and preserve our society; So I ask the AI of the future: will it be aware of ethics, of what it means to care for and protect others? If you understand language as processing, you will be aware that democracy is a concept that requires commitment and virtue?

Can AI have desires?

Thirdly, rationality; Today, rationality has been reduced to logical rationality; Influenced by modern philosophy, we see reason as a cold and calculating faculty that has nothing to do with feelings and emotions; However, Aristotle already intuited that all human beings desire to know, so that desire and intelligence are inseparable: “all choice is either desirous intelligence or intelligent desire, and this kind of principle is man”; Other questions I have about AI: Will it have desires or a will of its own? Will it be curious to know? Aristotle also said that philosophy begins with our capacity to be amazed by the world; Will AI amaze the world? Will it be amazed, as we are, at itself?

In relation to desire, there are two fundamental human principles that Greek philosophers have pondered for centuries: on the one hand, every human being wants to be happy; on the other hand, every human being longs for a world without injustice, violence and pain; Will AI also have these desires? In this sense, the structure of human desire is very particular: what we desire often does not correspond to reality, and many of the desires we have require time, commitment and trust; For example, I would like to buy a house in the mountains, but to do so I will have to work and save for years and be true to my desire; The vast majority of wishes are expected; This obviousness, which is natural to us, becomes a problem for artificial intelligence; Before explaining why, it should be noted that technology is not neutral; We have socially accepted that technology is not good or bad, but neutral, and that it all depends on how we use it; However, I believe that this vision is a fallacy, because technology establishes a very specific way of expressing ourselves and relating to the world, a semantics that includes concepts associated with each other: efficiency, speed, accuracy, prediction; When we say that the internet is slow, we say that it doesn’t work, precisely because we associate technology with instantaneity and speed; Returning to the question of waiting, the philosopher Gregorio Luri asks himself at the end of an epilogue written for the book “The time given away. An essay on waiting”by Andrea Köhler, how AI will think about waiting in the future; Can AI be patient? Will it have frustrations between its desires and its reality?

Will AI be able to age?

The value of waiting indicates a basic human trait: the awareness of temporality. How will AI perceive time? As Luri asks, “can she be truly intelligent if she does not feel touched by death, and if she does feel touched by death, where will she find consolation? Does the AI know what old age, the passage of time, is? Ultimately, the awareness of death reflects our vulnerability and finitude; Will AI be vulnerable?

The awareness of temporality also indicates that we are narrative beings; When we are born, for example, we break into our parents’ lives; We are genealogical beings, with a history that determines us; Will AI be aware of the narrative? And if it is not, will it really know how to communicate?

In conclusion, I have many more questions than answers; the question of AI is complex. Perhaps in the world of communication, we professionals will have to be able to identify those realities that are human, if any, to differentiate ourselves from AI and develop much more human communication; What is clear is that nobody knows what the future will bring, and this is another good question: what will AI think about the future, about its future?

La entrada Is AI as smart as they say it is? Philosophy has something to say se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

The journalist is dead, long live the journalist 3.0

If we focus on the new communication paradigm of the Internet era, the figure of the message sender in possession of the information, who decides what is truthful and therefore relevant to society, has long since signed its death warrant. The web 2.0 caused an evolution of the audiences of classic communication models and ended the unidirectionality that mass media are supposed to.

Since the early 2000s, the receiver of the messages has been transformed into a user with the ability to interact with transmitters and other users, which in turn makes it a transmitter, a rebroadcaster and an amplifier; The accessibility of the technology to create these messages is now universal and has placed a multimedia tool in every citizen’s pocket. Information has evolved into multimedia content; The channel is now constituted by a myriad of semantics platforms, increasingly decentralized and emitting a constant flow of messages and information in real time, which leads to saturation

All of the above, and especially the social web, has been to journalism what the meteorite that hit the earth 66 million years ago was to the dinosaurs; It has eradicated the previous model and forced the profession to compete in an environment where the user has become empowered, has adopted the role of content creator and is now the medium, the message and even the channel. The information professional and sole possessor of veracity has been extinguished to make way for the citizen journalism or journalism 3.0.

The content curator

This phenomenon has thrown the traditional media into a deep crisis from which they have not yet managed to emerge and to update themselves as they have never had to do before; But the quintessence of the professional journalist versus the citizen journalist has remained unchanged, it has only had to adapt to a new context of high demands;

From 9/11 to the Arab Springs

While the Lewinsky scandal, the pinnacle of infotainment, is considered the first major news case of the Internet era, 9/11 is recognized by authors such as Dan Gillmor, in his book We the media, as the turning point of the blogger phenomenon. On that terrible day they rose up as the chroniclers of events, in the face of the collapse of the webs and the classic media, breaking forever the canons of the informative orthodoxy that delimited, to date, the professional channels;

There was no turning back; Exclusivity over information was taken away once and for all and the era of monopoly of the traditional channels was over; The new reporters transgressed the rules and mixed reporting with opinion, planting the seed of what more than a decade later would give rise to the fake news and journalism had to reinvent itself.

It was another historic event of major importance that restored the profession to a place of relevance in the information consumption chain;

Between 2010 and 2012 the world witnessed a series of popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya, known as the Arab Spring through blogs and information from citizens, who relayed the events in first person, while the media in those countries hid the reality. At the time, Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera decided to set itself up as the platform for all this popular content, exercising a role ofgatekeeper of veracity, applying journalistic criteria, no longer to the production, but to the selection and service of those information provided by the protagonists of the news. And it gave birth to the new professional journalism of the digital age;

In the last decade, the core skills of the trade have become a compass to help readers navigate a new world of infoxication constantly and in which anyone can broadcast information without checking or verifying. Journalists have been able to regain their authority, no longer as the only loudspeaker, but as a filter, hierarchizer of information and content curator.

Is there anything new in journalism in the face of AIs?

Just when we thought we had reached a new status quo, the challenge posed by artificial intelligence is once again shaking the foundations of the profession. This new revolution puts society as a whole in check and poses an almost dystopian future in which AIs will produce the content, supplanting journalists, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators and almost any craft reserved for human creation.

What is even more shocking is whether they will be able to illuminate alternative and artificial multimedia realities, where misinformation and the fake news will take on new dimensions, to the point where it will be virtually impossible to distinguish between what is real and what is a construct of machines.

Gatekeepers of the veracity

We journalists have arrived at this situation without having yet left behind two decades of idiosyncratic changes, which we have tried to summarise in this text, but with the previous lesson well learned; And in the face of the new artificial realities, our role as curators of content, key verifiers and verifiers will become even stronger; “selection” of information and realities, based on journalistic criteria and using professional honesty”, claims Miquel Pellicer, director of Digital Communication at the UOC, in the podcast El elefante verde blog.

As Pellicer so well expresses, we are not inventing anything; We have been at the crossroads for years and journalists have learned to coexist with the citizen journalism we talked about during the Arab Spring, with social networks, content creators, youtubers, tiktokers and streamers; We have seen the birth and death of journalistic content dissemination tools (does anyone remember the web-source phenomenon –RSS feeds-, which were largely replaced by Twitter and other social networks?).

We have abandoned our pulpits of one-way communicators and have learned to interlocue with audiences and incorporate their capacity to produce content; we have been flexible; we have renewed the profession, incorporating new skills and capacities, which have turned us into almost orchestra men and women; We write, layout, search for and retouch images, apply html code, produce copy, disseminate news on RRSS (and a host of other functions that we are absorbing so that technology does not pass us by). And he who has not learned, has fallen by the wayside;

The definitive evolution of the trade

Throughout this process, two weaknesses have become apparent:

1. The first and most obvious is how the academic programmes at national universities have been overwhelmed by the evolution of the profession, and have come up with answers for the training of new journalists late and badly. Even today, as we move into Web 3.0 – not Web 3, mind you – where AI is proving that it will play a major role in the semantic and digitalised web, young journalists enter the workforce with almost embarrassing knowledge of Web 2.0, so it ends up happening that they learn their trade in the newsrooms where they start as trainees – something that has happened all their lives, by the way; It is to be hoped that the same will be true of the new challenge that AI poses to the profession;
2. The second is the inability of large media corporations to react quickly to innovation and the reluctance of each of us communication professionals to embrace it. Despite all the above, we remain entrenched in our craft of being the only ones fit to inform and we are reluctant to abandon those pulpits that we no longer have and that are now occupied by streamers, tiktokers or influencers. But our mission in this new world of artificial intelligence is to be the first to learn how to use these tools to amplify the verification, content curation and critical thinking functions of journalists.

We are tasked with train these artificial intelligences so that they respect citizens’ fundamental rights, do not show bias towards minorities – while being inclusive – and do not contribute to increasing social inequalities. Do not manipulate; Do not misinform; Do not construct false stories;

In short, we must renew ourselves once and for all, abandon all resistance to the fact that a story, today, can be told by anyone much better than us, even a machine, and lead a counter-revolution: the one of ethical Artificial Intelligences; The one of information professionals as guardians of truthfulness;

La entrada Journalism and AI: the values of the craft versus artificial realities se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

Well, this conception of copyright is being challenged by what is considered the most important technological revolution to date: Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is known by all (or almost all) that through this science, computer programmes are created that perform actions that emulate or are similar to those performed by the human mind, such as learning, reasoning or the much debated creation of works;

Today, we are immersed in a different form of creation from the traditional one, with commercial music and AI inventions, and this is something that is transforming the concepts of ‘composer’, ‘author’ and ‘inventor’, but what about that of journalist?

In the world of communication and journalism, we find AI systems that can not only help the efficiency of the sector, but can even be seen as ‘supplanting the journalist’.. Thus we find QUILL.ai an AI system that writes reports autonomously; It is currently being used in the publication of sports reports and no reader has been able to identify that the reports were not made by a human; Also the GPT-3 system, a word processor model, which allows for the generation of written language; Thanks to this algorithm, the user only has to start writing one paragraph and the system completes the rest as coherently as possible;

This automation of information is already happening in newsrooms around the world., generating what has come to be known as the“computer journalism”. However, within it, media professionals also need significant legal protection for their moral intellectual property rights, including the right to have authorship of their works acknowledged.

For copyright, artificial intelligence is a direct attack on some of the traditional foundations on which it is basedand leaves us today with more open questions than answers.

Unsurprisingly, the emergence of the artificial intelligence has had an impact on the key concepts of protection of human rights.intellectual property, leaving the theory of copyright protection, which is centred on human creation, in need of being rethought.

Thus, we find that the mediate end is protected, the creation’s heritage and its author to continue creating, without contemplating the possibility of an authorship different from the human one; But in itself, the concept of authorship has ceased to be that creation of the nineteenth century that was exclusive and limited; today we find different forms of creation that have changed the concept of thesuch as blogs and other social media content;

Nos guste o no,in the coming years we are going to have to rethink the pillars on which intellectual property has been built in recent times. It is unquestionable that machines create works with elements that in some way have a creative content, but currently and under current legislation, they are not eligible for copyright protection.

The main problem lies in authorship and whether a machine can be attributed authorship.. In this sense, given the current legislative situation, in order to proceed to attribute copyright to a machine, a considerable legislative change should be made, and it is not enough for case law to develop criteria that attempt to modify this reality; Change must happen fast as technology evolves at a dizzying pace; Moreover, it must be done in a harmonised way, as the lack of harmonisation could lead to divergent national solutions;

*Article written by Aída Tari, lawyer specialised in intellectual property;

La entrada Artificial Intelligence, does it infringe copyright? se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

The first thing that comes to my mind is how this strike would be explained on a TV news programme; How do you count that they stop doing what they do, people who don’t know what they do? It would be fun;

I have then tried to give a brief overview of our tasks; If it were true to the process chain, it is likely that the first to be affected would be the media intelligence services platforms (clipping companies), which would see their service interrupted outright; No one would go into their files or extract any data; The information would remain there, in their archives, at a standstill;

If nobody receives the information extracted by the clipping companies, nor prepares it in a way that meets the information requirements of the users, the users would be left without the information they consider necessary for the development of their tasks; Those who would like more information than is readily available to them, should go to each and every media outlet and pick out from all the information that is available what is of interest to them, not only about their own company, but about the company’s activity in connection with current affairs; All this by hand and without technological tools to facilitate the process; The demand for hours of dedication would be infinite; Many would avoid doing so; Therefore, the end customer would be relatively well informed;

At the same time, journalists would find their emails empty (something I’m sure they would celebrate with glee for the first few days) and their phones would stop ringing, which would be very calming for them; Shall we try? They could then focus on talking to their sources (most of them related to company communication departments and consultancies, until then content facilitators), but on this occasion, it will not be possible; There will be no one on the other side; Numerous journalists with no content to put in their mouths;

Of course, many journalists have direct access to primary sources, but they have to find the time and dedication of these sources, which is not always possible; How long would it take to achieve publishable content? Could the media have journalists working on a story for several days?

Our proposed strike would also affect the sources themselves; Part of their time should be devoted to meeting the needs of the media, providing them with information, data, analysis, etc. They should make it part of their agenda to manage their relationship with journalists; In addition, prepare in good time what you want to say, what you can say (especially in regulated markets) and how to say it; In other words, the tasks of a good spokesperson are well done, and this is also done by the communication teams (whether internal or external).Can you imagine what it would be like in companies?

It is possible that the media would then have less information, as there would not have been the collaboration of an unpaid army of content creators, approaches, reporting, documentation and contacts of different spokespersons on different topics that journalists may not have time to think about on a day-to-day basis;

If creators, designers, advertisers, etc. were also involved in this strike, the problem would be aggravated, affecting the media’s profit and loss account, as they would have no advertising campaigns with which to meet their expenses; Nor could they focus solely on the organisation of events, the manna that is transforming the media business model, because there would be no consultants to organise them, no editors to write the scripts or speeches, no caterers, hostesses, audiovisuals – among many other professionals involved – because no one would be in charge of designing the event and carrying it out; The media’s profit and loss account has been hit.

Companies would lose some of their voice, because there would be no one to monitor how the organisation’s target audiences, especially internal audiences, feel and what they need; Nor would they know how to ground their purpose, or how to monitor the delivery of their commitments aligned with their mission and vision; They would not be able to hear what their targets are talking about, or what is being said about them; They would not be able to participate in that conversation despite having as much or more experience than many others;

Publishing groups would not have brand ambassadors either; Those of us who work in communication would stop recommending the reading of articles -whether we have collaborated or not- because they penalise us for this wonderful task of amplifying a joint work; It is as if every time you recommend a book, a film or a song you get a slap in the face in the form of an economic tax; Our heads would explode;

I could go on; I am sure that, if I dig a little deeper, I could reach many more impacts; I don’t know how much of a dystopia this is or could be; What I am very clear about is that for this to happen we would have to empower ourselves, be very clear about our role, value it, be courageous and, most importantly, join forces;

So far, that makes two of us; Will you join us?

*Image created by AI on the Dall-E 2 platform;

La entrada Notice: everybody to the communication strike se publicó primero en Agencia comma.

It’s been a fun year, I’ll say that; And not because it has not been free of difficulties, hardness, intensity, threats… but because it has not allowed us to stop or stop learning; At this stage of my professional (and also personal) life, to continue learning and having fun with what you do and what you are involved in, seems to me a luxury;

I have asked our friends, the intelligent but artificial ones, to tell me what they think are the barriers we have been working with this year and the challenges for the coming year; And, it turns out that for these girls, the past and the future are similar; This we are told: “the fragmentation of the media landscape, making it difficult to reach target audiences with traditional methods such as advertising; the increasing use of social media and other digital platforms by consumers, requiring communications and PR professionals to be more innovative in their approach; and a shortage of talent, as there are not enough qualified professionals to meet demand”;

Grammatically correct, I think this approximation could be an approximation for last year, for this year, for two years from now… Although it can serve as a reference, that is not what I was looking for; I wanted enlightenment and this, I’m afraid, comes from our experience, our work, our research, our practice… That AI is here to stay, there is no doubt about it; But it is firmly linked to two coordinates that we must not lose sight of:

1. The danger of content by weight: quality versus quantity? And what will make us able to distinguish the true origin of a content?
2. Will it mean the disappearance of content creators (read writers, journalists, bloggers, editors, designers, artists…) I’ll leave it there and go back to the subject of this last post of the year: perspectives of communication 2023;

Communication challenges in 2023

1.- Uses of technology

To continue to deepen in identifying how all these new tools are transforming the practice of our profession; and, as a by-product, whether we professionals will be prepared to face the multiple challenges;
With regard to the use of artificial intelligence, I think it explains it perfectly calvoconbarba in his last post. Beyond the coordinates outlined above, we will see how it can change the way we interact with information and how it will affect our decision making; I worry about whether we will be able to tell when we are being sold a bill of goods; We will have to be more awake than ever and never stop learning;

2.- Sustainability, transparency and accountability

Can these words be more beautiful? Brands are (or should be) striving to communicate more clearly and transparently their commitment to ESG in the broadest sense of the word, not only in their speeches but also in their actions; Consistency is going to be closely monitored. The Global Alliance’s annual report explicitly states: “Knowing how to detect, analyse and counteract these unethical techniques has become key to maintaining trust and reputation in the long term. Trust and reputation are strategic issues for companies; Ethics must always be at the heart of our actions: integrity, objectivity, honesty; ESG criteria are here to stay and it will be the territory of communication to ensure their identification, performance and transmission;

3.- Data, data, data

Increasingly, communications work requires a deep understanding of data to demonstrate its true impact; Professionals will have to know how to interpret them appropriately and to make the most of them in an efficient and effective way; With data, possibly, we will be able to demonstrate the value of intangibles whose management depends directly on our work and which is not always sufficiently valued; Just look at the communication and marketing budgets; There is much to be done here and the work of associations such as ADC is going to be essential;

4.- Innovation and creativity

Our ability to imagine, to create narratives that capture the dialogue between technology and creation, adapting the content to the logic of the digital but without losing the essence of humanism, will be fundamental to break the limits and self-imposed rules; But “The challenge of innovation in the sector remains enormous.” and requires a change of beliefs; Are we prepared? Are we ready?

5.- Real-time communication

Agility; Everything is moving too fast; Although, as Mario Tascón (Prodigioso Volcán) in the latest episode of El elefante verde, “Thinking requires stopping. If you don’t stop, you don’t think”, companies must become more agile and be prepared to respond to social, technological and economic changes in a fast and at the same time effective way;

I could go on and on, but I think that with five references we can mark the challenges on which we should not lose focus in the year that is about to start;

From comma, with all the passion for communication that characterises us, we wish you a good end of 2022 and a powerful energetic charge to put the power of conscious communication at the service of people and the space we inhabit during 2023;

La entrada Five challenges for communication in 2023 se publicó primero en Agencia comma.