A new entrant called Honeyjar wants to bring AI into the press release, pitch, and public relations workflow — a corner of business software that has resisted automation longer than almost any other function. The pitch is simple: most small and mid-sized companies don't have a PR department, so AI should fill the gap between "we have news" and "a journalist actually covers it."
What happened
The tool positions itself as an all-in-one layer for communications work that previously required either hiring an agency or muddling through manually. That typically means drafting press releases, building media lists, writing pitch emails, and tracking coverage once something runs. The company argues that PR as an industry has long been inefficient, opaque in pricing, and inaccessible to businesses that can't afford a retainer.
This isn't the first attempt to apply AI to PR. Platforms like Muck Rack, Cision, and Prowly have spent the past two years layering AI writing assistants and media-matching algorithms onto what used to be manual database work. What distinguishes newer entrants is less the technology and more the target customer: rather than selling to PR professionals who already have tools, they're selling to the business owner who has never hired a publicist and doesn't know where to start.
The broader AI-for-professional-services wave has already hit legal (AI contract review), HR (AI resume screening), and sales (AI-generated outreach). PR is a logical next stop, partly because the work — writing pitches, finding the right contact, tracking results — looks a lot like other outreach-heavy jobs that AI has already automated.
Why it matters
The timing is notable because journalists have spent the last two years publicly complaining about AI-generated pitches flooding their inboxes. Several outlets have started filtering or auto-rejecting emails that read as obviously AI-written. A tool built to help more companies pitch faster arrives into a media environment that is actively trying to slow that exact behavior down.
This creates a tension that's becoming common across AI tools built for outreach: the technology makes it cheaper to generate more communication, but the recipients on the other end are adapting countermeasures just as fast. The same pattern has played out in recruiting (AI resumes vs. AI screening) and sales (AI cold email vs. spam filters).
What this means for small businesses
For a business owner without a comms budget, a tool like this lowers the cost of producing a professional-looking press release or pitch — work that previously required either a freelance writer or an agency retainer running into the thousands per month. That's a genuine, measurable savings.
What it doesn't automatically solve is the relationship side of PR — the part where a journalist actually opens the email because they trust the sender or the story is genuinely timely. AI can speed up the drafting; it can't manufacture a relevant news hook or a reporter's trust. Businesses that use these tools to mass-blast pitches risk ending up in the same spam-filtered pile as everyone else doing the same thing.
A more practical use case, at least for now, is internal: drafting announcement templates, standardizing messaging across channels, and tracking coverage after the fact — lower-risk tasks where speed matters more than nuance.
What to watch
Watch whether media outlets start explicitly flagging or rejecting AI-assisted pitches at scale, the way several have already done with AI-written freelance submissions. Also watch pricing: tools that launch with broad, affordable access to small businesses often introduce tiered paywalls around media list size or pitch volume within the first year.
Bottom line
AI can now draft a press release and find media contacts faster than a solo founder could manage alone, but it doesn't change whether a journalist on the receiving end decides the story is worth covering.