# A Review of Artificial Intelligence Research in Peer-Reviewed Communication Journals
## 7 Future Directions  
As AI becomes increasingly powerful, its applications continue to expand between 2022 and 2024. While 2022 marked the year that generative AI captured public attention, 2023 was the year it began to establish a foothold in the business world. As a result, 2024 was a crucial year for AI's future, with researchers and businesses working to determine the most effective ways to integrate this technology into our daily lives [97]. In the communication field, the recent developments can be incorporated into natural language processing (NPL), social media and content creation, media and journalism, marketing and customer communication, crisis communication and public relations, and ethical considerations and governance. While AI is transforming communication through effective and personalized content, it has also raised ethical and regulatory concerns within the field. Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of computer science and AI that utilizes machine learning to allow computers to interpret and interact with human language. Today, NLP is a part of daily life, powering search engines, chatbots for customer service, voice-activated GPS systems, and digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Cortana [98]. The rapid advancements in NLP have changed the way individuals and organizations interact with language data, influencing applications like automated customer service, language translation, and sentiment analysis. Thus, these developments offer unique opportunities to improve communication and enhance customer service and understanding across languages and cultures. However, they also present significant challenges, including ethical dilemmas, concerns about data privacy, and the ongoing need for improvements in algorithmic accuracy and fairness [99]. Therefore, it is important to carefully evaluate the impact of integrating NLP technologies into daily life and address the challenges they present in the future. The year 2024 was also when AI made a great impact on content creation [100]. The most common use cases for AI-powered written content include emails and newsletters (47%), text-based social media posts (46%), video-based social media content (46%), and blogs and long-form articles (38%) [101]. AI tools including ChatGPT, Jasper, and Copy.ai are now creating content faster, more efficient, and more impactful [102]. AI tools quickly analyze vast amounts of data and give marketers deep insight into consumer behavior. As AI evolves, digital marketing anticipates far-reaching impacts such as advanced customer segmentation to real-time personalization, deeper connections between organizations and publics, better decision-making, and stronger public engagement [103]. These AI impacts on content creation also bring challenges in terms of misinformation and the ethical use of deepfakes. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [104] identified some challenges, including fake news, bullying, defamation, media manipulation, and democracy damage. These transformations also raised concerns around journalism. The rise of generative AI systems, particularly, affects the entire news cycle, from information gathering to news dissemination, which raises questions revolving around issues such as transparency, accountability, responsibility, bias, and diversity [105]. AI is also revolutionizing the public relations industry specifically with media monitoring and sentiment analysis. It holds the potential for transformation including enabling brands to anticipate emerging trends, addressing crises before they escalate, and delivering highly relevant content with precision [106]. For instance, AI-driven crisis management includes technologies that analyze vast amounts of data, predict potential crises, and create responses. This process involves NLP, sentiment analysis, machine learning models, and data mining, which can help organizations identify the issues before they escalate and also empower them to craft effective communication strategies [107].