How to write a press release with AI: 7 steps, 5 ChatGPT prompts, what journalists reject

Key takeaways

• 53 percent of journalists oppose AI-generated pitches, on accuracy and personalization grounds, in Cision's 2026 survey of 1,899 journalists. Cision (13 May 2026)
• 66 percent of the same journalists rely on PR-provided content for story ideas, and 72 percent say fewer than a quarter of pitches are relevant. Cision (13 May 2026)
• 82 percent of journalists use at least one AI tool themselves; ChatGPT is used by 47 percent. Muck Rack (19 March 2026)
• Google does not penalize AI text. "Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines"; manipulation of rankings is. Google Search Central Blog (February 2023)
• The brief is the work. Facts in, constraints on, three fact-check passes out. The model is the fastest part of the process and the least important.

What AI does well in a press release, and what it cannot do

A language model turns a list of facts into a shaped draft: headline, subhead, dateline, lead, body, quote, boilerplate. It does that in seconds, in the structure you ask for, in the language you ask for. Given a term sheet and an investor list, it produces a 400-word funding release that needs editing, not rewriting. That removes the blank page, which is the part founders and marketing managers put off.

What it cannot do is know your facts. It does not know the round size, the legal name of the company, the exact title of the CTO, or what the CEO agreed to say. Left without those, it fills the gaps with plausible text, and plausible is the failure mode: a customer logo you never signed, a number rounded to the nearest ten million, a quote in model voice. Every step in the workflow below exists to keep the facts yours and the shaping the model's.

When to write it by hand

• Crisis communications. A breach, a lawsuit, a recall, a leadership exit. Every word is reviewable by counsel and the tone has to match a specific audience. Draft with legal, not with a model.
• Regulated disclosures. Listed companies, pharma, medical devices, financial products. Use the model for internal summaries, never for the disclosure text. A hallucinated figure in an earnings release is a regulatory problem, not a typo.
• Founder-voice announcements. If people read your releases because they sound like you, use the model for structure only and rewrite every sentence.

The 7-step workflow for writing a press release with AI

Treat the model as a fast junior writer: obedient, quick, and prone to small errors. You are the editor.

1. Collect the source facts before you prompt. Gather the 5 Ws, two named quotes with titles, one concrete number, the boilerplate and the dateline. Paste them into the prompt so the model has ground truth. Never ask the AI to invent a number or a name.
2. Pick the tool for the job. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all draft well from a good brief. Use the free PressPilot generator when you want the brief enforced by a form and the output in English, French or Spanish without writing a prompt. Use a general model when you need to iterate on tone.
3. Prompt with a tight brief. State the audience (tech press, trade press), the tone (factual, no adjectives), the length (350 to 450 words), the structure (headline, subhead, dateline, lead, body, quote, boilerplate) and the constraint: use only the facts supplied.
4. Read the draft critically. Read it out loud. Flag every adjective, every unsourced number and every phrase like "industry-leading". If the lead does not answer who, what, when, where and why in 60 words, regenerate with a stricter constraint.
5. Fact-check in three passes. Pass one: names, job titles, legal company name, dates. Pass two: numbers, percentages, round size, customer counts. Pass three: each quote matches what the person agreed to say. Correct in the draft; do not re-prompt and hope.
6. Rewrite the lead and one quote. AI leads bury the news. Rewrite the first 60 words so the hook is in the first 15. Rewrite at least one quote so it sounds like the person. A quote in model voice is the first thing a reporter notices.
7. Publish on your newsroom with Article markup, then pitch. Host the release on your own domain with Article JSON-LD carrying one named author, datePublished and dateModified. Then pitch a short list of journalists on the beat. Muck Rack's 2026 survey found 88 percent of journalists immediately disregard pitches that miss their beat.

5 ChatGPT prompts for a press release

These prompts work as written in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Replace the bracketed placeholders. They follow what OpenAI's prompt engineering guide recommends: a defined role, the relevant context pasted in rather than assumed, explicit rules for the output, and a fixed structure (OpenAI, prompt engineering). Keep them in a shared document and version them.

1. Funding announcement prompt

You are a senior PR writer. Draft a 400-word press release in AP style.

Facts:
- Company: [name], [one-line description]
- Round: [Seed / Series A / B / C], [amount in USD or EUR]
- Lead investor: [name]
- Participating investors: [list]
- Use of funds: [bullet list]
- Founder quote: [verbatim, attributed to CEO name and title]
- Investor quote: [verbatim, attributed]
- Boilerplate: [paste existing boilerplate]
- Date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
- City: [dateline city]

Constraints:
- Headline under 100 characters, include amount and round type.
- Lead answers who, what, when, where, why in 60 words.
- No adjectives: no "leading", "innovative", "revolutionary".
- Use only facts supplied above. If a fact is missing, write [MISSING].
- Output: headline, subhead, dateline, lead, body, quote block, boilerplate.

2. Product launch prompt

You are a senior PR writer for a B2B SaaS company. Draft a 380-word press release in AP style.

Facts:
- Company: [name]
- Product: [name, one-line description]
- Launch date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
- Problem it solves: [2 sentences]
- Three key features: [bullet list with one proof point each]
- Pricing: [tier, currency, unit]
- Customer quote: [verbatim, attributed, with company]
- Founder quote: [verbatim]
- Availability: [regions, channels]
- Boilerplate: [paste]

Constraints:
- Headline under 100 characters, include product name.
- No marketing adjectives.
- Include one metric with its source.
- Use only facts supplied above. If a fact is missing, write [MISSING].
- Output: headline, subhead, dateline, lead, three body paragraphs, quote, boilerplate, media contact.

3. Partnership prompt

You are a PR writer for two partner companies. Draft a 350-word joint press release in AP style.

Facts:
- Company A: [name, sector]
- Company B: [name, sector]
- Partnership scope: [integration / co-selling / distribution / joint product]
- Why it matters to the customer: [2 sentences]
- One proof point: [early result, pilot, committed spend]
- Quote from Company A leader: [verbatim, title]
- Quote from Company B leader: [verbatim, title]
- Boilerplates: [both, paste]

Constraints:
- Headline names both companies.
- Lead answers what the partnership does for customers, not for the two companies.
- Balanced attribution: both companies get equal weight.
- No "strategic", no "synergy".
- Use only facts supplied above. If a fact is missing, write [MISSING].

4. New hire prompt

You are a PR writer. Draft a 280-word press release in AP style announcing a senior hire.

Facts:
- Company: [name]
- New hire: [full name, new title]
- Reports to: [title]
- Start date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
- Background: [previous roles, years, relevant achievements]
- Why the hire now: [1 sentence on business context]
- Quote from CEO: [verbatim]
- Quote from new hire: [verbatim]
- Boilerplate: [paste]

Constraints:
- Headline: [Company] Names [Name] as [Title].
- Include one quantifiable achievement from the new hire's background.
- No generic phrases like "welcomed" or "excited to join".
- Use only facts supplied above. If a fact is missing, write [MISSING].

5. Research report prompt

You are a PR writer for a research-driven company. Draft a 420-word press release in AP style announcing a new industry report.

Facts:
- Company: [name]
- Report title: [title]
- Sample size and methodology: [n respondents, region, dates]
- Three headline findings: [each as a single sentence with a number]
- Contrarian or surprising finding: [1 sentence]
- Author or analyst quote: [verbatim]
- Download URL: [url]
- Boilerplate: [paste]

Constraints:
- Headline leads with the most surprising finding, not the report title.
- Every finding cited has a number and the sample size appears in the body.
- Call to action: download the full report.
- Use only facts supplied above. If a fact is missing, write [MISSING].

Which AI tool for which job

Prices read on each vendor's public page on 2 September 2026. Where a page refused our fetch, the row says so and no price is quoted.

The general models give you the prompt and full control. The marketing suites add templates and nothing at the journalism layer. The free generator adds the form that enforces the brief, the AP-style output, and the next step: sending the release to journalists picked by beat. PressPilot's paid writing assistant works in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese; the free tool covers the first three.

What journalists say about AI-written releases

Two surveys fielded in early 2026 describe the same audience from two sides. Cision surveyed 1,899 journalists across North America, EMEA and APAC in January and February 2026: 66 percent rely on PR-provided content for story ideas, 72 percent say fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant, and 53 percent "oppose AI-generated pitches due to concerns around accuracy and personalization" (Cision, 13 May 2026). The same report has 43 percent naming AI as their top challenge, and only 21 percent saying they have not used AI in their own work, with brainstorming at 48 percent and research or fact-checking at 43 percent (PR Newswire, 27 May 2026).

Muck Rack surveyed 1,044 journalists between January 30 and March 2, 2026, keeping 897 responses: 82 percent use at least one AI tool, up from 77 percent a year earlier, ChatGPT leads at 47 percent, Gemini rose from 13 to 22 percent, 86 percent say some of their stories originate from PR pitches, and 88 percent "immediately disregard pitches that miss their beat" (Muck Rack, 19 March 2026).

Read together: the objection is not to the tool, which most journalists use, but to what a lazy prompt produces, an inaccurate and generic release sent to the wrong person. The three-pass fact check answers the first half; picking journalists by beat answers the second.

Does AI-written copy hurt SEO or AI citations?

Google answered in February 2023 and has not changed the position: "Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines", and "using automation, including AI, to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies" (Google Search Central Blog, February 2023). A single accurate release on your newsroom with a named author is the first case. A hundred variants of the same release with different keywords is the second. For getting the release cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity, the press release GEO guide covers the crawler settings and the writing patterns.

Common mistakes with AI-generated releases

• Invented facts. Customer names in the lead, round sizes rounded up, job titles that do not exist. All from prompting without the source documents.
• Model-voice quotes. "We are thrilled to" from a CEO who never said it. Rewrite at least one quote from a real sentence the person used.
• Adjectives. Industry-leading, innovative, revolutionary. Reporters have filtered these for a decade; a model produces them by default unless told not to.
• The buried lead. The news at word 90. Move it to word 15.
• Drifting boilerplate. The model paraphrases the boilerplate you pasted. Paste it back verbatim.
• No dateline, no contact. Two lines the model skips when the brief does not include them.
• Sending it to everyone. A clean release to a journalist off the beat is one of the 88 percent that gets discarded. Pick by beat.