Modern society is navigating through unprecedent, rapid technological advancements. While the fourth industrial revolution is spearheading the changes in the industry using newer technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across industries. AI has managed to come out of the traditional mould of "just another technology" and is reshaping the landscape of engagement with business stakeholders, i.e. customers, employees, investors and regulators. At the same time, AI is also improving efficiency, fostering innovation and augmenting the competitive advantage of businesses.

In PwC's 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, 34 percent of the CEOs from Bangladesh stated that generative AI (GenAI) has been adopted in their companies to a certain extent. In the same survey, about 3 out of every 4 CEOs stated that GenAI will significantly change their way of doing business, particularly the way their businesses create, deliver and capture value.

GenAI has reached a stage of advancement where it can now respond quickly to individual queries made by humans. Faster responses improve engagement with stakeholders and enhance their satisfaction. For example, many companies have started piloting GenAI-powered chatbots to respond to customer queries. Earlier chatbots, which could look through the user manuals to provide relevant information, have now been transformed to become more intelligent and intuitive. Such tools can now search multiple documents simultaneously, establish correlations among the searched contents with respect to the queries posted and compose a meaningful response.

GenAI is also transforming many internal activities within each business. Traditionally manual jobs, such as note taking and transcribing, are increasingly becoming the job of GenAI tools that listen to the conversations and transcribe the same.

While GenAI offers remarkable opportunities, the path towards its adoption in business communication poses certain challenges. One key concern is the lack of human touch while interacting with stakeholders. The responses with accurate and pertinent information are likely to be devoid of empathy and nuance that typically characterise human interactions. The risks arising from such gaps need to be proactively managed. For example, grievances expressed by a customer, if not well understood and not effectively responded to, may take social media by storm, thereby impacting the business.

Algorithmic bias is likely to be another business risk, and it is also vulnerable to cyberattack. A GenAI tool compromised by a cyberattack may end up fuelling employee grievances. Business leaders must thus pay attention to these risks and have a robust risk management plan in place. In other words, a balanced approach between speed of adoption and robustness of risk management will be the main criterion to success.

AI-driven communication is not limited to technology adoption -- it is also about demonstrating leadership in its adoption. Both CEOs and heads of communication are going to play a critical role on how an organisation uses AI for managing its communications. In addition to reviewing how an organisation communicates with its stakeholders, the AI-integrated software needs to be nuanced enough to respond to queries effectively on various media platforms.

The era of AI in business communication is still in its infancy. However, it can have both positive and negative impacts on businesses and should not be taken lightly. As the GenAI tools evolve, the importance of business communication will evolve with tasks overlapping between humans and algorithms, presenting both opportunities and challenges. The role of a successful business leader will thus be defined by how effectively their organisation's communication strategy remains centred with humans while being efficient in an increasingly complex world.

The author is a partner with PwC