Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging force in communications, it is now an active, unevenly distributed advantage amongst organizations and practitioners. As this integration accelerates, a clear divide is taking shape between early adopters who are integrating AI into strategy, workflows, and storytelling, and those who lag behind. In this article, Céline Heemskerk, founder & CEO of Global Village Strategies, an Amsterdam-based international consultancy specialising in embedded communications leadership for technology organizations navigating transformation and growth, analyzes the pitfalls of this widening gap amongst agencies small and large, independent practitioners, company leaders, and in-house teams, and raises solutions for an equitable future.
AI isn't just changing how communications works. It's reshaping who gets to do it well and who gets left behind.
As AI adoption accelerates, the profession is not becoming more equal. It is becoming more uneven. And unless that is addressed deliberately, the consequences will be structural and lasting.
BCG's 2025 GenAI Workforce Analytics research ranks communications among the top two functions for AI-driven transformation, with the potential to reclaim up to 47% of time.
At an individual level, that is already happening. AI is augmenting research, drafting, and strategic thinking.
But that impact is not scaling. Embedding AI across teams and organisations - equitably, consistently, and with governance - is a fundamentally harder problem.
The real question is not whether AI works. It is who gets the infrastructure to make it work beyond the individual.
I've spent the last 15 years leading corporate communications across global technology companies - Microsoft, Indeed, Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow - coaching executives, building external and internal communications strategies, and managing agencies across more than 20 countries at once in EMEA and Latin America. What I've observed is a profession fragmenting under simultaneous structural pressure.
Agency consolidation is standardising delivery models in ways that reduce flexibility for tailored, embedded work. In-house teams are carrying expanding responsibility - revenue growth, regulatory navigation, AI-era visibility - without proportional increases in headcount or support. Large organisations are building internal AI governance systems while independent communicators and local agencies navigate the same shift alone.
The foundations that enable good communications work are becoming structurally uneven - and AI is accelerating that divide.
More critically, AI introduces a cognitive bias: it is optimised to agree, not to interrogate. Without strong governance, it reinforces narratives instead of stress-testing them - exactly the failure mode communications leaders need to guard against.
The structural risk is not technological. Left unaddressed, it leads to uneven capability across the discipline; governance blind spots where AI is used without accountability frameworks; erosion of judgment under automation pressure; loss of continuity in agency–client relationships; and increasing stratification between those with institutional infrastructure and those without.
This is not a tooling or a training gap. It is a professional sustainability issue - and it is one the profession needs to address together.
How to close the gap and reshape the ecosystem together
The divide will not close on its own. It requires deliberate action from every part of the profession, and it requires in-house leaders, agencies, and independents to stop treating their challenges as separate.
1. Make AI governance a professional baseline
Treat AI literacy the way you treat media training or crisis preparedness: as a non-negotiable professional standard. If your team is using AI without a governance framework, that is a leadership gap - not a skills gap.
There is no standard operating model for communications practice. It is contextual to every organisation, market, and structure. That makes AI governance harder - and more important.
Every team needs to break down its own processes and deliberately integrate AI into its specific workflows. That work cannot be delegated to a vendor or assumed to follow from individual tool adoption.
2. Bring junior communicators into the strategy room
Too often, AI fluency sits at the bottom of the organisation while governance decisions are made at the top - by those with less hands-on exposure to the tools.
Reverse that dynamic deliberately.
Identify the people experimenting most actively with AI and involve them in strategic conversations. They will sharpen your thinking. You will sharpen their judgment.
That exchange is where the profession moves forward.
3. Rebuild trust between in-house and agency teams
In-house teams are raising the bar. Agencies need to meet it - through transparency about how AI is used and by demonstrating that it makes work better, not just faster.
At the same time, in-house teams must bring agency partners into their AI thinking earlier. Shared standards - not parallel journeys.
The quality of the relationship determines the quality of the counsel.
4. Recognise what independents actually bring
As global agency networks consolidate, the industry is rediscovering a fundamental truth: value was never in the brand. It was always in the people.
Quality of work, continuity of relationships, and depth of expertise come from individual practitioners - not institutional scale.
New models are emerging that reflect this: embedding senior expertise directly within organisations, supported by flexible, specialist networks assembled around specific challenges.
In a landscape defined by adaptability and integration, this is not a workaround. It is an evolution of the model.
5. Reshape the ecosystem together
The AI divide is not an in-house problem, an agency problem, or an independent practitioner problem. It is a profession-wide issue - and it demands a profession-wide response.
Industry bodies need to establish AI governance as a professional standard. In-house teams need to open their AI thinking to partners rather than evaluating outputs in isolation. Agencies need to invest in the infrastructure that earns client trust. Independents need to be recognised - and to recognise themselves - as a vital, connected part of the ecosystem.
But closing the divide is not simply about catching up. It is about actively reshaping the ecosystem - new operating models, new standards, and new ways of working across in-house, agency, and independent boundaries.
The profession has always derived its value from judgment, credibility, and accountability. AI raises the stakes for all three.
This Is the Moment
The long-term value of communications will not come from content velocity. It will come from judgment, governance, and the ability to operate as a connected profession rather than a fragmented one.
The AI divide is already forming. Closing it is a leadership responsibility - for every part of this profession. The only way forward is together.
