The press release:
AI information economy’s backbone

Not long ago, the press release was treated as a relic of a bygone media era, useful, perhaps, but hardly central in an age of influencers, short-form video and algorithm-driven storytelling. Yet in the most unexpected twist of 2025, the press release has not only refused to fade into irrelevance; it has staged a quiet, decisive comeback.

New evidence of a shift

PR Newswire’s newly published 2025 Global State of the Press Release Report makes this reality impossible to ignore. Drawn from nearly 1,000 communications professionals worldwide and more than 300,000 distributed releases, the findings depict an industry undergoing profound transformation. And the catalyst is not nostalgia or professional habit, it’s AI.

Why AI has re-elevated the press release

The rise of generative engines has created a landscape where information is abundant, but authenticity is scarce. As AI models ingest vast oceans of text and offer confident answers synthesized from fragments of the web, the value of a timestamped, authoritative, verifiable source has never been higher. Paradoxically, the format once considered old-fashioned has become AI’s favorite proof point.

AI in the writing process, but humans still lead

This is why more than half of companies now allow generative AI to participate in crafting releases. Not to replace human judgment, but to accelerate the laborious parts of the process and refocus teams on clarity, narrative and precision. In other words, AI is reshaping the mechanics of PR, but the principles remain strikingly human: credibility matters, context matters, truth matters.

How audiences now consume brand information

The resurgence is not only visible in how releases are written, but also in how they are consumed. As newsrooms shrink and search behaviors evolve, audiences increasingly encounter brand information indirectly, surfacing through AI assistants, aggregators, or social feeds that seldom credit their sources. The press...