Hyundai Card's AI Test Shows PR's Real Problem Isn't the Tools

A South Korean credit card company just ran one of the most honest experiments in corporate communications. Hyundai Card put a former journalist on its PR team up against AI. Both wrote a press release for a new product. Employees read both versions without knowing which was which.

The human won. But that result is almost beside the point.

The Test Was Never About Winning

Hyundai Card was clear about its real goal. "By framing the exercise as a competition, we were able to spark employees' interest, while also gaining vivid feedback that helped us identify and supplement areas where we may fall short compared with AI," a company official said.

This matters. Most companies rolling out AI in creative departments either mandate it from the top or quietly introduce tools and hope people adjust. Hyundai Card made the encounter public, competitive, and safe to question.

The employee reactions tell the real story. Some found the two drafts nearly impossible to separate. "The more we read, the harder it became to distinguish between the human-written piece and the AI-written one," one participant said. Others found the AI version "unnatural." There was no consensus. That ambiguity is exactly what makes this useful data.

PR's AI Plateau Is a Trust Problem, Not a Tools Problem

Hyundai Card's experiment lands at a strange moment for the global communications industry. AI adoption in PR has stalled: 76% of PR professionals now use generative AI, up just 1% from 75% the year before. Near-universal use, near-zero growth.

82% of Enterprises Deploying AI Agents Have No Governance Plan

82% of enterprises deploying AI agents lack governance plans. This liability gap is costing CFOs, CMOs, and compliance leads in regulatory and operational risk across APAC.

Mission MediaMission Media

The obstacle is not access to tools. It's confidence. Employee trust in their company's AI strategy has dropped from 47% to 31% in a single year. 85% of office workers are figuring out how to work with AI agents on their own time. And 56% of workers globally say they feel more anxious than excited about AI's rise.

APAC complicates this further. The region leads the world in individual AI tool adoption, with 63% of APAC PR professionals using AI for external content creation, versus just 14% in the US. But BCG research shows APAC organizations are far less likely than global peers to actually change how they work to accommodate AI (57% vs 70%). Fast adoption, slow transformation.

What Hyundai Card Got Right

Vice Chairman Ted Chung participated in the company's LLM training program himself, then wrote publicly about the experience. He reached 560 employees across two cohorts. The curriculum covered real work tasks, not theoretical overviews, using dummy data structured like actual company data for security.

The company also sequenced its AI rollout deliberately. It started in data-heavy areas like credit underwriting and fraud detection, then moved to creative functions including PR, design, and legal. Risk-aware sequencing, not hype-driven deployment.

"Leaders may not actually need to do vibe coding themselves," Chung wrote on social media, "but senior leaders need to understand the basics in order to communicate with working-level employees."

Most leadership AI announcements are about capability. Chung's was about communication. Closing the gap between what executives decide and what employees actually experience.

What This Signals for APAC Communications Teams

Hyundai Card's test is a data point, not a blueprint. The company spent the equivalent of US$700 million building its own AI platform over a decade and became the first Korean financial company to license that platform abroad. Not every communications team operates from that foundation.

The Enterprise AI Adoption Gap Just Got Smaller

monday.com rebuilt around AI agents to solve enterprise adoption. 250,000+ customers can deploy agents without technical expertise or leaving existing security controls.

Mission MediaMission Media

But the underlying insight travels. In a region where nearly half of organizations face a trust gap between AI confidence and AI readiness, companies that turn AI anxiety into curiosity will move faster than those that mandate compliance and hope for the best.

The human won round one. Hyundai Card has already announced round two is coming.