Roughly one in three journalists using HARO have chosen to filter out pitches identified as entirely AI-generated, according to Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, speaking on the podcast Let's Talk PR & More. The figure, around 35%, reflects a growing wariness among journalists as generative AI becomes more prevalent in public relations.
"You've got some that prefer that nothing AI generated hits their inbox because let's be honest, plenty of stuff hits the inbox on their end," Farmiloe said. Featured, which owns and operates HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Connectively, has unique visibility into this trend because every pitch submitted through its platforms is scored by AI detection. This provides a dataset that is otherwise unavailable, as platforms see the submitted pitches rather than the workflows that produce them.
About 21% of those pitches score as 100% AI-generated, Farmiloe said. Journalists can enable a one-click filter to remove these pitches before they reach their inbox. However, the opt-out is not a default setting, and Farmiloe suggested the true level of objection is higher than the adoption figure indicates: "I'd say it's even higher. Like I said, the submission form has that box unchecked by default."
If journalists leave the box unchecked, the AI score is still delivered as a signal, with a color-coded percentage score accompanying each pitch. The decision to act on that signal remains with the journalist. Featured performs the detection through a partnership with Pangram, an AI detection company. Farmiloe acknowledged the limitations of the technology: "I think that there's opportunities for false positives. Models are advancing and they're becoming better and better."
Farmiloe attributed the high volume of AI-generated pitching to a strategic misreading of how the HARO platform works. "I think the misconception that a lot of PR pros sometimes have when they approach a platform like HARO is that it's a numbers game," he said. Instead, he recommends a framework derived from the HARO name: be helpful, be authentic, be relevant, be on time. He relayed a journalist's blunt articulation of the dynamic: "I don't want to hear from you until I want to hear from you."
The conversation also explored broader shifts in the media landscape. Farmiloe said journalists he speaks with commonly report having eight sources of income, including work for multiple publications, Substack, and consulting. Newsroom contraction, the growth of independent media, and changing economics in publishing are driving journalists toward more entrepreneurial models. This shift is changing media relations, as journalists increasingly depend on the performance and reach of their work. PR professionals may need to think beyond simply securing a placement and consider how they can help coverage reach an audience after publication.
Farmiloe also questioned whether traditional metrics like domain authority are still sufficient for determining which media opportunities matter, especially as PR pros consider how coverage can influence brands in AI-generated answers. "I think the evaluation part of PR is going through a transformational shift," he said.
These insights come as Featured continues to connect journalists with expert sources through HARO, which has been doing so since 2008, and Connectively, a searchable database of journalist requests. The full episode of Let's Talk PR & More featuring Brett Farmiloe is available here.
