How can AI help me get press coverage?
AI speeds up the grunt work of PR: building targeted journalist lists, researching what each writer actually covers, and drafting personalized pitches and press releases in multiple angles. It won't earn coverage on its own, relevance and a genuine story do that, but it lets a solo founder run an outreach process that used to need an agency. Use AI for research and first drafts, then personalize the top line yourself.
Build the list first. Use Perplexity or ChatGPT with web access to find reporters who've covered your space recently, then verify on the outlet and the journalist's recent bylines. Tools like Prowly, Muck Rack, and Hunter help with contacts and emails; HARO/Connectively and Qwoted surface reporters actively seeking sources. Never blast a generic list, a tight list of 20 relevant writers beats 500 random ones.
For pitches, give the model the journalist's recent articles and ask for a 4-5 sentence email that ties your news to a beat they care about. Generate multiple angles for the same story (data, customer narrative, market trend, founder POV) so you can match the angle to the outlet. Keep subject lines short and specific. For press releases, AI is fine for structure and boilerplate, but the lede and the quote should sound like a human, not a template.
The reality: journalists get hundreds of pitches and can smell mass AI outreach. The personalized first line, why this reporter, why now, is what gets opened, so write or heavily edit that yourself. Track responses and iterate on angles. PR is a follow-up game; AI helps you stay organized enough to follow up well.
Prompts to try
Copy these into ChatGPT or Claude to go deeper.
Build a 60-day PR strategy using AI for journalist research, pitches, and follow-ups.
Generate 10 personalized journalist pitches for my [news/story] using public author data.
Write 5 press release variations using AI with different angles (data, story, trend, exec).
Audit my last 3 PR pitches [paste] and rewrite for higher response rate.