When PR Goes Too Far With AI: A Cautionary Tale

A story broke recently that should give every business owner pause before they hand their media outreach over to a chatbot. Futurism reporter Maggie Harrison Dupré discovered that a UK-based PR firm, Movchan Agency, had been pitching journalists using at least fifteen fake publicist personas, several of them with AI-generated headshots pulled straight from a site called "this-person-does-not-exist.com." One of the fake reps even had a leftover watermark from the site still visible in her photo.

The firm's clients, several of whom said they had no idea this was happening, were understandably alarmed. As one startup told Futurism, using fake personas to represent their brand "goes entirely against our brand values and standards." Movchan's founder admitted it was "poor judgment," and said the firm would wind the practice down. But the damage was already done: reporters had been quietly running these emails through Pangram, an AI-detection tool, and finding that some pitches came back as 100 percent AI-generated.

That last detail is the one business owners should sit with for a moment.

Editors and Reporters Are Already Screening for This

If you've been tempted to let an AI tool draft your bylines, press releases, or pitch emails and send them out as-is, you should know that the journalists on the receiving end are increasingly checking. Tools like Pangram exist specifically to flag AI-generated text, and more newsrooms are quietly running submissions through them before deciding whether a pitch is worth a reply. A pitch that reads as machine-written doesn't just get a lukewarm response. It often gets deleted without a second look, and it can damage the relationship between your brand and that outlet for future pitches too.

This isn't paranoia on the media's part. Reporters get flooded with outreach every day, and the ones who've been burned by low-effort or fabricated content have every reason to be skeptical. Once an editor associates your name or your company with AI-generated pitches, earning back that trust is a much harder climb than earning it the first time.

AI Is a Tool, Not a Replacement for Judgment and Relationships

None of this means AI has no place in PR work. It can be genuinely useful for brainstorming angles, tightening a draft, or organizing research. The problem starts when companies treat it as a substitute for the actual craft: understanding a reporter's beat, knowing what makes a story newsworthy versus promotional, and building the kind of relationship where a journalist trusts your pitch enough to open the next one.

The Movchan story is really a story about what happens when that judgment gets outsourced. The firm didn't just use AI to help write; it fabricated entire identities to make outreach look more personal and human than it was. When that unraveled, it wasn't just the fake personas that took the hit. Real clients, with real reputations, got pulled into a story about deception they never approved of.

That's the risk companies take on when they let automation quietly stand in for the people-first work that good PR actually requires. A byline or a pitch with your company's name on it is a direct reflection of your brand, and cutting corners with AI can put that reputation in someone else's hands, including the hands of a detection tool you'll never see running.

What This Means for Your Business

So the real question every business should be asking is this: how are you using AI in your business? Is it a supporting tool to help drive efficiency in your PR and marketing strategy, or are you using it as your primary PR and marketing agent? That distinction matters more than it might seem, because the firms in the first category are the ones building real relationships and lasting credibility, while the firms in the second category are the ones most exposed to the kind of risk Movchan's clients found themselves facing.

The main takeaway here is that the fundamentals of PR have not changed, even as the tools available to execute it have. Reporters build their careers on credibility, and they extend that same scrutiny to the people pitching them. A relationship with a journalist is earned through relevant, well-researched, human pitches sent consistently over time, not manufactured through a faster production process. When a firm tries to shortcut that relationship, whether through AI-generated bylines or, in Movchan's case, entirely fabricated personas, the risk does not stay contained to the agency. It attaches itself to every client whose name was on that outreach, whether they approved of it or not.

That is precisely why the strategic layer of PR - the judgment about which stories are worth telling, which reporters are worth approaching, and how to build a relationship with them - that lasts beyond a single pitch, remains as valuable as ever. AI can support that work by helping with research, drafting, and organization, but it cannot make the relationship-driven decisions that determine whether a pitch gets opened or deleted, and whether a client's reputation grows or takes a hit in the process.

If you're rethinking how AI fits into your PR and marketing strategy, or you want our recommendations on where the line should sit for your business, we'd love to talk. Email us at sarah@kaneandhook.com or visit kaneandhookcomm.com and connect with us on LinkedIn.