Your Most Important Audience Might Soon be a Machine

I’ve built my career on human trust. But the other day, I asked my AI assistant for an update, and trusted its answer. That small moment crystallized a shift we predicted in the Scriptorium Initiative whitepaper: the rise of ‘synthetic stakeholders’, AI agents that mediate communication and trust between organizations and people. In other words, algorithms may soon replace humans as our primary audience.

AI as the new trust broker

These AI agents, think personalized systems built into your phone, car, or even a wearable pin, are becoming trusted gatekeepers. They filter and interpret corporate messaging for investors, employees, and customers alike. Tomorrow’s stakeholder may not open the Wall Street Journal or a company press release; they’ll simply ask their AI: What’s true? What matters? What should I do next? By the mid-2030s, people may trust their AI assistants more than even the most reputable news outlets. For communicators, that’s both exciting and unsettling.

The opportunity and the risk

AI can verify facts in seconds and tailor information to each individual’s needs. But we’re also surrendering much control to machines. Traditional media once anchored a shared version of truth. Now, personalized algorithms are splintering that into countless micro-narratives. My version of a story might be completely different from yours, shaped by our respective AIs. How do we maintain common ground when reality itself is personalized?

Proof points from today’s trends

1. AI-generated news is surging

Bloomberg’s “Cyborg” produces nearly a third of its articles. The Associated Press uses automation to generate thousands of earnings stories, up from just a few hundred a decade ago. On a single day in 2024, over 7% of all global news articles were AI-written, meaning much of what stakeholders consume is already processed, or even created, by machines.

2. Personal AI advisors are emerging

Devices like the Rabbit R1, a pocket-sized, voice-first AI, hint at a future where everyone has a real-time, always-on information broker. OpenAI’s secretive project with Jony Ive, reportedly pocket-sized, context-aware, and screen-free, may accelerate this shift. The next AI-native device could challenge the iPhone’s dominance.

3. From one public story to millions

The unified nightly news is history. Social feeds, news apps, and AI assistants now curate hyper-personalized realities. Your AI may emphasize a completely different angle of a story than mine does. Communicators must craft messages that resonate across millions of parallel versions of reality.

What this means for communicators

We can no longer rely on top-down framing to build trust. We’ll need to collaborate with AI systems to ensure our messages land as intended. As my Scriptorium Initiative co-founder @Nanne Bos puts it, this is a shift from storytelling to story-steering—guiding narratives in an environment where AI decides how information flows.

The risks are clear: an AI could misinterpret your message, filter it out as low trust, or reshape it in ways you never intended. But if we engage these AI stakeholders smartly, we can deliver hyper-relevant, credible communication directly through their trusted channels. Imagine every press release being optimally interpreted for each recipient by their AI,a custom briefing just for them.

Some organizations may even create their own AI personas to ‘talk’ directly to stakeholder AIs, ensuring their voice is accurately represented in machine-to-machine conversations. Communicators will become AI whisperers, fluent in both algorithms and ethics, to ensure the human message survives translation.

Staying human in the machine age

A fellow communicator recently joked, ‘My most important audience might soon be a machine.’ We laughed, then paused, because we knew it was true. The challenge is to remain human-centered: keeping honesty, empathy, and transparency at the core, so that whether a message passes through a person or a program, it retains its integrity.

Whether our next audience is human or synthetic, the mission is the same: make the truth travel.

How is your team preparing for that shift? Has your own AI assistant already become your most trusted filter? I’d love to hear your experiences as we navigate this new frontier together.

About the Scriptorium Initiative

The Scriptorium Initiative is a nonprofit think tank exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming the future of human communication. Through research, convenings, and collaboration, Scriptorium helps leaders understand and navigate the profound implications of AI—not just as a tool, but as a new paradigm for trust, connection, and influence.

In partnership with Page, Scriptorium is working to equip senior communications leaders with the insight, fluency, and foresight needed to lead in an AI-native world. Together, we aim to produce actionable thought leadership, build frameworks for ethical and strategic engagement, and shape what responsible communications looks like in the age of intelligent systems.

Let’s keep the dialogue open - before the algorithms decide it for us. Learn more at www.scriptorium-initiative.ai