A report published today by Help a Reporter Out (HARO) finds that public relations has expanded to serve not only human readers but also the artificial intelligence systems that summarize content. The report, titled “What is PR in 2026?”, is based on interviews with 39 PR practitioners ranging from a 51-year veteran to the founder of an AI-native agency, and maps 38 distinct practices across eight themes.
The central finding is that PR now has dual audiences: the people who read a story and the AI systems that summarize it. Practitioners describe an emerging discipline of “machine relations” alongside media relations, while insisting that human work machines cannot do has become the industry’s differentiator.
Key findings include that AI answer engines are now a primary PR surface. Practitioners conduct prompt research, reverse engineer AI answer summaries across models, and optimize content for citations. Earned media does double duty: one practitioner’s 16-month analysis of 166 media placements found 84% landed in outlets with measurable AI visibility in large language models. Another agency’s client research found that 30-45% of AI prompt answers draw on editorial and earned media.
The press landscape has fragmented into a longer tail, with op-eds, industry trade publications, independent Substacks, and source-request platforms replacing the single big-splash placement. Creators now function as media outlets, with PR teams researching influencers like journalists, commissioning editorial-style content, and brokering non-paid YouTube collaborations. The human layer is the differentiator: as AI-generated pitches flood journalist inboxes, practitioners are returning to phone calls, in-person events, and long-term journalist relationships.
“HARO has sat at the intersection of journalists and sources since 2008, so we hear how the job is changing from both sides,” said Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured, which owns and operates HARO. “The biggest shift in 2026 is that every placement now has two audiences: the readers who see the story, and the machines that cite it. The practitioners in this report are mastering both.”
The report opens with Devon Blaine, who has owned and operated The Blaine Group, a Beverly Hills-based communications agency, for 51 years. “PR has always been about delivering a timely and honest message in an interesting way,” said Blaine in the report.
The full report, including all 38 practices, eight themes, and a practitioner FAQ on AI, GEO, and measurement, is available at https://blog.helpareporter.com/what-is-pr/.
