The Guardian recently published an article on what some are calling “AI-washing” the growing tendency for agencies and businesses to position themselves as AI experts regardless of how deeply AI is actually integrated into their work. While the term itself may be new, the phenomenon isn’t.
Communications professionals have seen this before. Sustainability brought greenwashing. Purpose-driven branding introduced purpose-washing. Now, as AI dominates headlines, investor conversations, and boardroom agendas, a similar pattern is beginning to emerge.
The challenge is that AI is not just another industry buzzword.The challenge is that AI is not just another industry buzzword.
Unlike previous trends, AI has become a shorthand for innovation, efficiency, and future-readiness. Companies know clients are asking about it. Agencies know prospects expect to hear about it. The temptation to overstate capabilities is understandable.
The problem is that audiences eventually catch up.
The debate prompted commentary from Andy Berg, CEO at Rhapsody, who recently shared his perspective on LinkedIn. Berg argues that AI-washing is ultimately a symptom of a broader issue: businesses focusing on AI as a message rather than as an operational change.
Every major technology shift goes through a phase where branding moves faster than reality. Right now, there are plenty of businesses talking about AI. Far fewer are fundamentally changing how they work because of it.
Andy Berg, CEO Rhapsody
Read Andy Berg’s full LinkedIn post HERE
According to Berg, one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding AI adoption is the belief that transformation begins with introducing new tools. In reality, many organisations are still operating inside workflows designed long before AI became commercially viable.
The approval structures remain the same. The duplicated effort is still there. Production processes remain layered, and work continues to move through the same handoffs between teams.
“When AI enters those environments without redesigning them, it simply accelerates whatever already exists,” Berg explains. “Sometimes that creates value. Often, it just means inefficient processes happen faster.”
This distinction is becoming increasingly important as clients become more sophisticated in how they evaluate AI claims.
For a period, simply mentioning AI in a pitch deck could create a sense of competitive advantage. Today, most buyers assume AI is already part of the toolkit. The questions they’re asking are becoming much more practical.
- Where is AI creating measurable value?What friction has disappeared?Which workflows have improved?What outcomes are better?And which parts of the process still depend on human judgement, experience, and creativity?
- What friction has disappeared?
- Which workflows have improved?
- What outcomes are better?
“Those questions matter because they move the conversation beyond adoption and into impact,” says Berg.
For PR and communications professionals, this shift presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
The industry’s role has always been to help organisations communicate their value clearly and credibly. But when messaging moves ahead of reality, credibility becomes difficult to sustain. In the context of AI, where expectations are evolving rapidly, overpromising can quickly become a reputational risk.
The strongest communications strategies won’t be built around broad claims of AI expertise. They’ll be rooted in transparency and specificity demonstrating how AI is being used, where it creates value, and where human expertise remains essential. That distinction matters because creativity, strategy, and communications have never been defined solely by efficiency.
Despite rapid advances in AI, meaningful creative work still depends on interpretation, cultural understanding, emotional intelligence, and the ability to recognise relevance before the data fully validates it. These are qualities AI can support, but not replace.
At Rhapsody, Berg describes this as moving beyond AI as a tool and toward what he calls “creative intelligence, orchestrated” designing systems that allow people to spend less time navigating process and more time applying judgement, strategic thinking, and original ideas.
Ultimately, the organisations that create lasting value over the next few years won’t necessarily be the ones talking most loudly about AI adoption.
“They’ll be the ones redesigning workflows, collaboration models, production systems, and decision-making around what AI actually changes,” says Berg.
That may also be the key distinction between genuine innovation and AI-washing. Because AI alone isn’t a strategy.
“The advantage comes from understanding how AI changes the structure of work itself and building systems designed for that reality, rather than trying to retrofit old ways of working around new technology,” Berg says.
As with every major industry trend, the market will eventually separate substance from positioning. When it does, credibility will matter more than ever.
For communications professionals, that means focusing less on whether an organisation uses AI and more on whether it can demonstrate meaningful outcomes. In the long run, trust will remain the most valuable differentiator.