How New York Life's Comms Team Reached 90% Daily AI Use in 22 Months

New York Life's chief communications officer Paul Gennaro has shared nine lessons from 22 months of AI integration in corporate communications — a framework grounded in the Institute for Public Relations' (IPR) 2026 generative AI research and validated against the team's own tracked outcomes.

The results are specific: 90% of the team uses AI multiple times per day; 76% took on additional projects due to AI-driven efficiency gains; 78% reported an increased ability to focus on strategic work; and 78% cite the AI implementation as a reason for higher job satisfaction.

The framework's central thesis is that AI success is less about the technology than the operational culture surrounding it. Of the nine checklist items — which span culture, leadership, governance, and measurement — three stood out as most predictive:

1. Culture beats technology: Adoption depends on trust, transparency, and leadership example — not on mandates
2. Workflow integration is the inflection point: Value is created when teams redesign how work gets done, not just when individuals use tools
3. Discipline remains essential: AI may speed up production, but standards for accuracy, credibility, and brand integrity remain unchanged

The team also built an agentic system that connects a media-monitoring input directly to Microsoft Copilot, with New York Life's crisis communications toolkit embedded — compressing monitoring, synthesis, and drafting into minutes.

Key Takeaways

• 90% daily AI use achieved in 22 months through embedded training and peer learning, not top-down mandates
• Only 37% of organizations have clearly communicated a change narrative for AI adoption — a gap that slows enterprise-wide alignment
• 56% of the team identified building custom GPTs and Claude Projects as their top 2026 training priority, signaling maturation past basic use
• Effective measurement tracks strategic outcomes (capacity added, projects taken on) not just tool usage rates

Read the full article on Ragan Communications