Each week we’ll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know!
Editor’s note: This is our last edition of 2025. Thanks for reading, and wishing you all the best in 2026!
What You Should Know
Unboxing OpenAI’s Year-End Goodies
Last year, it was the “12 Days of OpenAI,” a series of launches that included Sora, the video creation tool, the o3 reasoning model, and an analog throwback: making ChatGPT available by calling 1-800-CHATGPT. This year’s releases have come with a bit less fanfare. Last week, OpenAI released GPT-5.2, its new flagship model. Yesterday, it released a new model for image generation.
While GPT-5.2 sets new standards across several benchmarks for tasks like coding and creating spreadsheets, it hasn’t shown similar leaps in writing ability. It still requires a good amount of back-and-forth iteration to get a concise result that doesn’t waste words or venture too far off-topic.
However, that doesn’t mean GPT-5.2 is a bust for communicators. Its knowledge cut-off jumped up to August 2025, and it’s better at understanding long contexts. Ethan Mollick, an Associate Professor at The Wharton School, shared examples of the model performing well in fact-checking, a crucial element of communications.
Another element is visuals, which OpenAI says you can produce four times faster with its new image generation model, GPT Image 1.5. TechCrunch reports that the launch was initially scheduled for early January, but that changed when CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” last month, fearing that OpenAI was losing ground to Google.
The biggest win is that it does a better job of editing small details. The “fine editing” paintbrush selector is gone for new image requests (you’ll still see it if you go back to a thread you started before Tuesday afternoon), and now you just type a detailed prompt. If you ask it to change someone’s facial expression, for instance, it will focus solely on that edit and not reproduce the entire image, unlike other AI image platforms, including previous versions of ChatGPT’s image tool. It also includes a library of images you’ve created, so they’re easier to find in one spot.
These new elements of ChatGPT (and there may be more to come, as Altman teased “a few little Christmas presents” last week) can help communicators as demand for storytelling continues to grow. The Wall Street Journal reports that “storyteller” or “storytelling” was uttered by executives in earnings calls 469 times this year, up 30% from last year. Sharper AI tools make it easier to generate drafts and visuals, but storytelling still depends on human judgment — deciding what’s accurate, what’s useful, and what’s worth telling at all.
Elsewhere …
- LISTEN: AI Cuts 8 hours of Advisor Busywork Down to 90 Minutes
- Whole Foods to Deploy AI Food Recycling Tech
- AI Is Creating More Work, Countering the Doomers for Now
- Purdue to Require AI Competency for all Undergrads as Universities Race to Adapt
- Stanford AI Experts Predict What Will Happen in 2026
- Introducing OpenAI Academy for News Organizations
Tips and Tricks
Better organize your chats
What’s happening: A common New Year’s resolution is to get better organized, and as AI use rises — OpenAI says ChatGPT message volume was eight times higher than last year among enterprise users — there’s a greater need for creating your own personal filing system. There are two main ways to do it: adhering to a naming convention for your chats, and using the projects capability in ChatGPT or Claude.
Mastering projects: Projects are a great way to keep conversations on the same topic together in one space (think clients if you’re at an agency, or departments or campaigns if you’re in-house). An added benefit is that you can load up documents and instructions to inform future chats in the project.
Keep in mind that for projects in ChatGPT, individual conversations will only live within the project and won’t show up in the left rail.
Creating a filing system: Alternatively, you could create a shortcut system where, instead of using folders, you abbreviate the client or department, then a very short description of what the conversation is about.
Think like the score bug on a sports telecast or the slugs in the AP digest, if you’re a former reporter. Rather than US-SPE–Spring Homes, you could have MKT-EdCal Q1 26. You can also search your conversations for certain words or phrases, but a filing system makes the conversation list more browsable.
Quote of the Week
“If you lower the cost of building software, you have 10 times the use cases for software. That’s the part that everybody misses.
“The people who predicted mass job destruction will be proven wrong.”
— Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, to Axios in a story about AI’s effect on the job market
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