How can we use AI to improve our communication?

Give AI a clear job

AI can help with many everyday communication tasks. It can develop ideas, organise information, turn notes into a first draft, explore different ways of explaining something, shorten existing copy and adapt content for different formats. The important part is knowing what you want AI to help with before you ask it to produce anything. OpenAI’s guidance on writing with ChatGPT follows a useful process of Plan > Draft > Revise > Package, beginning with the goal, audience and desired action before moving into drafting and refinement. Think of AI as part of the communication process, rather than the starting point. Decide what you need to achieve first, then give AI a clear role in helping you get there.

Start with what people need to understand

Before writing a prompt, think about the communication itself. Who is it for? What do they need to understand? What should they feel confident about? What should they be able to do next? These decisions give AI direction. If your organisation is already struggling to explain what it does, AI can quickly generate several polished versions without resolving the underlying message. The same problem can appear when different people use AI independently. One prompt describes the organisation one way, another introduces different language, and another shifts the emphasis again. Instead of creating greater clarity, AI can make inconsistent messaging spread more quickly across websites, social posts, reports and funding materials. Agree what you need people to understand first. Then use AI to help communicate it clearly in different ways.

Prioritise useful communication over volume

AI makes it much easier to produce content quickly. That can save time, particularly for small teams, but producing more only helps if the communication itself is useful. The Charity Digital Skills Report 2026 found that 79% of charities are already using AI in some way. Three in five use it for everyday tasks such as summarising notes and drafting emails, while 57% use it to create documents, reports and presentations. This makes it possible to communicate more often and create more with limited resources. The important question is whether that extra content is helping. Before creating another article, social post, report or email, consider what you actually need people to understand and what you want them to do next. Better communication is a more useful goal than simply producing more content.

Give AI your voice to work with

Telling AI to sound friendly, professional or engaging only gives it a general direction. Better results come from showing it what those qualities mean for your organisation. Give it your key messages, tone-of-voice guidance, preferred language and examples of communication that already sounds like you. This helps AI understand how you explain things, the language you use and the level of detail your audiences need. A messaging framework and tone-of-voice guide are particularly useful because they give both AI and the person reviewing its work the same reference point. Human judgement still matters. AI can imitate the surface of a voice while missing the thinking behind it. A draft can sound polished while becoming too promotional, vague or inappropriate for the audience. Someone who understands the organisation needs to decide whether the final communication is accurate, appropriate and genuinely sounds like you. If that shared foundation does not yet exist, a website, brand and messaging review can help identify what needs clarifying first.

Treat the first output as a draft

AI can produce polished, confident writing very quickly. That does not mean the information is accurate, complete or right for your audience. Treat what AI gives you as a draft to review and improve. Check the facts, question unsupported claims, look for important information that may be missing and make sure the language still reflects what your organisation actually wants to say. This is about more than proofreading. Someone who understands the subject and the organisation needs to decide whether the communication is accurate, useful, appropriately framed and consistent with your voice. OpenAI’s writing guidance similarly recommends working from reliable source material, reviewing the result and checking factual claims before using them. Human judgement becomes particularly important when communicating about lived experience, safeguarding, health, access to services, funding or other sensitive subjects. Whatever role AI plays in creating the content, your organisation remains responsible for what it publishes.

Protect sensitive information

Be careful about what you share with an AI tool. Personal data, confidential documents, information about service users and other sensitive material may need additional safeguards. The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on AI and data protection explains the data-protection responsibilities that apply when AI systems process personal information. Before sharing anything sensitive, understand your organisation’s policies and how the AI tool handles the information you provide. Also consider whether it needs that information at all. For many communication tasks, approved organisational information, anonymised summaries or carefully prepared source material will give AI what it needs without sharing unnecessary sensitive information.

Use a simple AI communication workflow

A useful process is:

Purpose > Source > Draft > Check > Refine

Purpose: Decide who you are communicating with, what they need to understand and what you want the communication to achieve.

Source: Give AI reliable information, agreed messages and relevant tone-of-voice guidance.

Draft: Give AI a clear task and enough context to produce something useful.

Check: Review the facts, claims, assumptions, tone and any sensitive information.

Refine: Use human judgement to improve the communication until it is clear, accurate and recognisably yours.

This gives AI a useful role at each stage while keeping the important communication decisions with the people who understand your organisation and its audiences.

Use AI to make good communication go further

AI can give small teams more communication capacity. It can help turn ideas and existing information into useful content, explore different ways of explaining something and adapt communication for different audiences and formats. The biggest gains come when AI has strong foundations to work from. Clear thinking, reliable information, agreed messages and human judgement help turn its speed and flexibility into better communication. Used well, AI can help you do more with the knowledge, ideas and expertise your organisation already has.