By PLUS Labs

Director Alma Vedra is using artificial intelligence (AI) to make herself and her team members more efficient. Alma is a key part of our competitive intelligence research practice at PLUS Communications. She started her career with PLUS right out of college and has been promoted three times since 2022.

Harnessing the power of AI is important to the future success of our business, and Alma is blazing trails with this exciting new technology.

“In the years ahead, AI is going to transform all aspects of communications, research, and public affairs,” said PLUS Partner Jim Landry. “In competitive intelligence, we are actively integrating AI into our workflows and Alma is a big part of that effort. She’s a dynamic force inside our business and a real innovator with AI.”

Read this Q&A with Alma Vedra to see how she’s using AI:

How Are You Currently Using AI to Make Yourself and PLUS Stronger and More Efficient?

AI is now infused in pretty much everything I do. If something is taking a long time to do manually, or if I find myself repeating the same task, AI is speeding up my workflow.

For research specifically, I use AI at every stage of a project. At the beginning, I use it to gather background information (basically what I’d expect a client to already know) so I can make sure I’m starting from a solid foundation. In the middle, I’ll use it to explore new angles or offshoots of research I might not have considered. At the end, I use it as a final check to make sure I’m not missing anything and to help connect everything.

It’s completely changed how I approach research. It helps me move through the more routine parts faster, so I can spend more time thinking creatively and testing new ideas.

What’s Your Biggest AI Success Story?

I come from a completely non-technical background, so coding has always felt intimidating. But I use AI to walk me through downloading tools I can use for research.

I basically asked for step-by-step download instructions, followed them, and then explained my job so it could help build a toolkit for me. It even wrote code that I could copy and paste directly into Python. When I got stuck, I’d upload screenshots and ask if things looked right or what to fix.

I’ve used AI tools to plug in a username and then see if that same username is used across multiple social media platforms, Selenium for data scraping, and Feedparser which conducts media monitoring from Google RSS feeds over 24 hours. They each have some cons (Sherlock sometimes hallucinates accounts, Selenium sometimes won’t pull the data in a clear way to paste, and Feedparser would pull titles but would miss some larger articles published), but it’s been really interesting to experiment with them. I can already see how they could become really powerful with more testing and iteration.

What Excites You Most About Where AI Is Headed?

AI has improved so much even in just the last few months. There are things I couldn’t do a year ago that I can do now. For example, it feels much better at actually reading and understanding full documents instead of partially guessing or hallucinating.

One thing I always recommend is going back and retrying things you may have tested months or even years ago. The results can be completely different now. And even if it can’t do exactly what you want, it’s still really useful as a starting point. I’ve found that breaking my prompts into smaller pieces helps a lot.

What Concerns You About AI?

Being earlier in my career, I’m wondering what happens if AI starts to replace certain parts of my job.

But I do think there will always be a need for a human element in competitive intelligence, especially when it comes to accuracy and understanding what a client is really asking for. I try to look at AI as something that pushes me to improve rather than something to avoid.

What’s the Next Big AI Project You’d Like to Work On?

I’d love to create something that integrates the databases we have subscriptions for (Lexis, Bloomberg, etc) to search names across all of these databases and give a report on that subject.

How Do You Stay Current With AI?

I try to stay current with AI by keeping up with news and reading about new tools as they come out. I also like going through tutorials and testing things out myself when I can. It’s changing so quickly, so I just try to stay generally aware of what’s new and how people are using it.

What Advice Would You Give Your Colleagues Who Are New to Using AI?

AI can feel pretty overwhelming at first, especially since there are so many tools and ways to use it. I’d say the best thing to do is just start trying things out. Test different platforms, and if one doesn’t click for you, move on and try another. Over time, you’ll figure out what works best for you and how it can actually be helpful in your day-to-day work.

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