How strategic comms leaders are using AI — and pulling ahead

Senior communication leaders are redesigning how org-wide work gets done.

Across the last six months, comms leaders stepped beyond “Will they put AI to work?” and sprinted toward “How deeply, quickly, and systematically can they put it to work?” Most are past trial-and-error and use AI routinely — but the most advanced usage coming from from seasoned communicators with deep expertise who have the vision and authority to change org-wide process.

To better understand the state of AI in workplace comms, we partnered with Off The Record to survey 171 communication leaders. For a balanced perspective, we made sure they were…

• At varying stages of their career.
• In organizations of different sizes.
• Working across different industries.

What we learned: There’s a growing divide between the organizations that seem stuck in a cycle of transactional AI — write this, check that — and those that have tapped into its ability to boost productivity, streamline process, and improve org-wide communication. The difference comes down to…

• those that have offered team- and org-wide training on AI’s application to communication.
• those that have not.

Comms is becoming the function that’s translating AI’s business opportunity and risk into human terms — shaping tone, building trust, and articulating utility and consequence. Its leaders are also becoming more common thought partners in org-wide governance, seeing themselves as the…

• architects of new comms infrastructure.
• interpreters of brand and business risk.
• designers of practical org-wide guardrails.
• advisors on how strong judgment can still scale with automation.
• influencers of how their organization is represented in AI search results.

Now is the moment to invest in comms-specific AI training, responsible guardrails, and strategies that treat new technology as a force-multiplier of creativity — instead of just another risk to manage. This report digs into some of the ways comms leaders are adopting AI, the challenges they’re facing, the opportunities they’re seeing, the unknowns they’re still exploring.

Let’s get into it…

Who we surveyed

We surveyed 171 communications professionals in late 2025. For a balanced perspective, we made sure they were...

• At varying career stages: directors (30%), managers (22%), VP and above (21%), consultants and freelancers (19%), individual contributors (8%).
• Working across different environments: in-house (51%), agency (23%), consultant or freelancer (21%), nonprofit and government (5%)
• Spanning multiple industries: technology, professional services, health care, consulting.

Three definitions that matter for this report:

• Advanced cohort: Folks who build AI workflows, custom GPTs, or who have used role-based agents, custom GPTs, or automated workflows on the job. It's 42% of or respondents.

• Builder behaviors: Having built or used at least one of three reusable AI tools on the job — custom GPTs or assistants, role-based agents, or automated workflows.

• High enablement: Organizations where at least two of three conditions were met — active organizational support around AI, AI guardrails are in place or in development, and AI training has been deployed.

1. AI is embedded, not experimental

• 96% use AI at least weekly.
• 77% use AI daily or constantly — meaning it is inside the workflow, not alongside it.
• Only 4% use it monthly or less.

Most usage today is drafting-layer work. Seventy-eight percent describe their primary mode as writing, editing, brainstorming, or pressure-testing ideas — but 14% have moved into the systems layer, building workflows, advanced prompts, or custom GPTs.

The performance case is already made:

• 63% of comms leaders say AI has helped them significantly in their jobs.
• 30% say it has helped a little.

Adoption is table stakes. Maturity is the new differentiator differentiator.

2. Maturity is helping top-performers pull ahead

The most sophisticated AI users in comms are the product of deliberate organizational investment.

Why it matters: Advanced behavior clusters at organizations with training, hands-on support, and a culture that asks people to bring others along. The advanced cohort is 42% of respondents. On every enablement signal we measured, this group shows clearly different conditions from non-advanced teams.

What separates them:

Advanced communicators are also a lot more likely to be the person their organization turns to when it needs to understand it. They become multipliers, not just individual contributors.

The org-design signal is equally clear:

• In high-enabled environments — where training, support, and guardrails overlap — 19% of individuals show two or more builder behaviors.

• In low-enabled environments, only 8% do. 

Advanced teams are also more aware of the AI risks around them. Fifty-two percent report seeing potential brand-risk outputs from AI vs. 40% of non-advanced teams.

3. The trust and readiness gap

Comms is using AI at scale. It does not yet trust AI at scale.

The big picture: Trust drives broader adoption. Where trust is absent, teams add friction, rework, and human review that cancels out the speed gains AI provides. And when trust is low at an org-wide level, individual confidence stays low and usage stays shallow.

• 43% of respondents say "I don't trust AI's output" as a current barrier for broader adoption — the largest single barrier they reported in this study.
• 45% have already caught AI-generate content that could have put their brand at risk.
• 33% say their job could be at risk if they do not adapt to AI fast enough.

Read together: Most communicators embrace AI as something they need and want to master. Their urgency is about competency, not survival. And many comms leaders are the pioneers of their own organizations — helping leaders shape messaging about managing change, refine guardrails for safer usage, and roll out training to expand adoption. 

Across orgs we surveyed:

• AI is encouraged and widely supported: 52%
• AI is supported with some restrictions: 33%
• Guardrails are in place: 50%
• Guardrails are in development: 21%
• No guardrails exist at all: 21%
• AI training has been deployed: 49%
• No training exists yet: 36%

4. From prompting to systems — the next frontier

The difference between AI as a personal productivity tool and AI as an organizational capability is systems. Workflows, agents, and structured pipelines are how teams go from "this saves me time" to "this changes how our function operates."

Where Comms leaders say they are:

• 31% have built or used custom GPTs or assistants.
• 17% have deployed automated workflows.
• 12% have built role-based agents — brand voice bots, media trainers, and similar tools.
• 58% have built none of the above.

The majority of the market has not yet shipped a structured AI asset. That is the gap — and it is also the opportunity. What is blocking the next step:

• Time: 55%
• Don't know what to build: 54%
• Skills: 51%
• Tool restrictions: 18%

What they want to build: The open-text responses paint a consistent picture. Practitioners are not asking for more general AI tools. They are asking for comms-specific infrastructure:

• Brand voice agents that know the company and can write to it without re-training every session.
• Smart media monitoring that flags not just coverage volume but narrative shifts and emerging risks.
• Reusable pipelines that take a single piece of source content and distribute it across formats, audiences, and channels without starting from scratch each time.

These are not futuristic requests. They are descriptions of workflows that exist in advanced teams today — and do not yet exist at scale.

5. The Leadership Playbook: Five investments to move the needle

Without deliberate investment, teams plateau. They keep getting faster at drafts. They never build the systems that turn speed into scale. The leaders who design for maturity now will define the function's capabilities in 2026 and beyond.

• Invest 1: Build comms-specific AI training

• Invest 2: Write clear guardrails before the next brand-risk incident

• Invest 3: Pilot system builds in two high-frequency workflow lanes

• Invest 4: Assign a real owner of governance

• Invest 5: Measure and report maturity quarterly

The bottom line:This is operating model change. The teams that manage it that way will look materially different in 12 months.

Go deeper

Read this year's state of workplace communications

Off the Record is the membership community and career accelerator for communications leaders with practitioner-led workshops, AI tools built for comms workflows, direct coaching, and a peer community of hundreds of senior practitioners. Founded by Gab Ferree, former global comms leader at Bumble, Slack, and Salesforce, Off the Record delivers tactical training members can use Monday morning. Communications leaders from companies like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Walmart, TikTok, Paramount, and Spotify trust Off the Record to sharpen their craft, prove their business value, and build careers that earn a seat at the leadership table — and still make it home for the dinner table.

Axios HQ helps organizations communicate more effectively — with communication training for any department, software for internal comms leaders, and editorial consulting for org-wide success. Our team has merged a decade of Axios and Axios HQ's human expertise, proprietary data, and comms best practices with cutting-edge AI, all proven to help any leader strengthen internal comms, better achieve business goals, and amplify workforce connection. More than 1,000 orgs trust Axios HQ for their vital communications, and more than 25,000 professionals have sharpened their communication skills in our hands-on training courses.