Your AI can write a press release, but it can't tell your story

Johan Konst, Founder of EUSA PR, was recently featured as an expert in Sifted (part of Financial Times), one of Europe's leading startup media outlets. He shared his views on how AI is changing communications for European tech companies.

The question is everywhere: can AI replace human storytellers in PR? According to a new analysis from Sifted, the answer is not so simple. Johan Konst is one of the experts helping to define where the line is.

AI makes PR faster but doesn't replace human judgment

In the March 2026 Sifted piece "It's time for AI to worry about humans," Konst was asked to share his expertise on how AI is changing the speed and quality of startup communications.

His example was clear: a UK drone manufacturer helping to stop wildfires from spreading across Spain, France, Greece, and the US.

With AI-powered media monitoring, EUSAPR can follow where fires are burning in real time. Within hours, they can find the right journalist in the right country and send a relevant pitch, in the local language. When a fire breaks out in Provence, the pitch goes out in French. When attention moves to Madrid, it switches to Spanish.

This is where AI truly helps in PR: speed, local relevance, and the right message at the right moment not replacing human thinking, but making it sharper and faster.

The rise of the storyteller

The Sifted article also looks at a bigger trend: European startups are hiring more communications professionals to stand out from the flood of generic AI-generated content.

Insa Schniedermeier, head of communications at Station F, Europe's largest startup campus, based in Paris, puts it well. She says AI content often feels too clean, too perfect. It lacks the small imperfections that make something feel real and human. "The outcomes sound too perfect, too formal, and as a result, boring," she says to Sifted.

Lucy Sharp, who has led communications for major companies including Seedrs and Revolut, has seen this shift up close. When she joined Seedrs in 2016, even a modest funding round could still get national press coverage. That changed fast. Today, startups are fighting for attention in a shrinking media landscape and generic AI content makes that fight harder, not easier.

Why 'good enough' writing is not good enough

AI has raised the floor of content quality. Almost anyone can now produce a decent-sounding press release or LinkedIn post. But it has not raised the ceiling.

A pitch that actually lands is one that feels human, timely, and specific. It mentions a wildfire in Provence, not "climate-related incidents in Southern Europe." It speaks to a journalist in their own language, about something happening right now.

That is what EUSA PR does: use AI for speed and local reach, and human expertise for the story that actually gets picked up.

Europe is catching up

European startups have long invested less in communications than their US counterparts. That is changing. Founders across Europe are becoming more active and more personal in how they tell their story and the ones doing it well are not using AI to write for them. They use it as a tool, while keeping the human voice front and centre.

At EUSA PR, that balance is exactly what we help our clients find.

About EUSA PR

EUSA PR is an Amsterdam-based PR and communications agency focused on tech and startup companies in Europe and the U.S. CEO Johan Konst works with companies across Europe to build narratives that earn real coverage in the outlets that matter.

Get in touch to find out how we can help your company communicate faster, smarter, and more humanly.

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