AI in engagement work: Open Voice Lab podcast episode 4 now live
Episode 4 of the Open Voice Lab podcast has arrived.
“AI Is Not the Oracle: Using AI in Engagement Without Losing the Human Touch”
This episode is all about AI and how it can be used to support engagement and consultation work.
Alexia and Rachel explore where AI can support the engagement and consultation process and where professional judgement still needs to lead. They also get into one of the burning questions people have – which is whether AI can analyse engagement and consultation data.
The advice is to embrace AI with caution. It’s important to identify genuine use cases, where AI is helping you be more efficient or achieve better quality. Use it as a research buddy, a challenger, a tool to support thinking – but don’t mistake AI for a magical all-knowing engagement professional.
Join our next free Learning Lab
If you’re an engagement professional looking to improve your own AI practice, straight away, then you’ll want to join our next Learning Lab. We’ll be giving you our top 5 tips for using AI – pulled directly from our longer AI training course we deliver to public sector organisations.
AI for Engagement: Five Ways to Use It Well and Stay Out of Trouble
Monday 9th November 2026
12.30pm to 1.15pm
Microsoft Teams
Our Learning Lab is a free 45-minute session run over a Monday lunchtime. Our sessions are very relaxed - keep camera on, turn camera off, eat lunch, ask questions, share your thoughts or listen only – as you wish!
AI in engagement work themes explored
How can AI be used in public engagement and consultation?
AI can support every stage of every stage of the engagement and consultation process, to varying degrees. This would include using AI for research, engagement planning, developing and testing content, analysing and reporting feedback.
Some of the most useful applications of AI come early in the process. AI can help you explore existing research, find previous engagement work, stress testing your plans, organising your thinking, and challenging your assumptions.
AI should support professional judgement, not replace it.
Can AI help with engagement and consultation planning?
Yes. AI can be a very useful starting point for engagement and consultation planning. You can use AI to organise ideas, identify possible audiences, structure activity and challenge gaps in your thinking.
That doesn’t mean an AI-generated engagement or consultation plan should be accepted without question. Engagement professionals still need to assess whether the objectives, audiences and proposed approach are appropriate.
AI should be used as a critical friend. Ask it what you may have missed? Ask it what assumptions you are making? Ask where it thinks your plan could be strengthened? But critically review the outputs – don’t assume AI is right. It is not magical.
Should AI write a consultation document?
No! AI should not be responsible for writing the substantive consultation document that you put in front of the public. That doesn’t mean AI can’t be used during the process – it can. You could for example use AI to help you structure your information, test whether language is clear, improve grammar.
What feels more acceptable is to use AI to produce a summary of a consultation document, but you need to prompt carefully. You must tell AI (via your prompt) what must be included, what can be shortened, and what must remain in full.
Any outputs from AI must be checked by you. You – the human – remain responsible.
Can AI help make engagement more accessible?
Potentially. AI can help engagement practitioners explore simpler ways of explaining complex information, test clarity, and suggest different wording. AI could also help when developing Easy Read document, e.g. help me break down this sentence into easy read, one point per one short sentence.
Think of AI as something that can help you test and improve your content, rather than something that can make a document accessible at the click of a button.
As with anything. You need to know how to do something yourself before you let yourself loose on asking AI to do it for you!
Should we tell people if we are using AI during engagement or consultation?
Yes. We think it’s essential to be transparent about your use of AI anywhere in your process. Have a statement of declaration people can easily see and find. Trust is fundamental to good engagement and consultation. You should be able to explain where AI has and has not been used.
Can AI be used to analyse consultation responses?
Yes, AI can be used for analysis. However, there is an important difference between summarising feedback and analysing through coding and theming.
AI can help with identifying patterns, suggesting codes, suggesting themes, and can help working with large amounts of data more management. Human checks and oversight are absolutely essential. The engagement professional in the process needs to interrogate the analysis, check how responses have been interpreted and make sure minority or unusual viewpoints aren’t lost in an automated summary.
If somebody who took part asked what happened to their response, could you explain it? If you can’t – rethink your process.
Is AI going to replace engagement professionals?
No! AI can make some tasks quicker. It can research, structure information, suggest ideas, challenge your thinking and support analysis. What it cannot do is take responsibility for an engagement and consultation process.
Understanding communities, making judgements, building trust, and being accountable are all inherently human. AI is a useful work buddy.
Want to hear more
We are excited to be an official sponsor of the upcoming CharityComms Conference about AI on 29th November 2026. Given our interest and training offer for AI, this felt like a fantastic event for us to support. Our sponsorship gives attendees the change to book into FREE advice appointments with us. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you need any support around AI.
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