Human Pitches Still Beat AI Pitches, HARO Data Shows
Media mention
A new HARO report put real numbers behind what many PR pros already suspected: human-written pitches land far more often than AI-generated ones.
Highlights
- Online, October 15, 2026
- Artificial intelligence has made its way into media pitching, but a new report from Help a Reporter Out (HARO) suggests the human touch still matters most. Of the more than 2 million pitches HARO analyzed, 79 percent had some human involvement, HARO CEO Brett Farmiloe told EIN Presswire. The remaining 21 percent were entirely AI-generated.
- What the data shows
- 79% have a human hand: HARO analyzed more than 2 million pitches and found 79 percent had some human involvement; 21 percent were entirely AI-generated, roughly 420,000 pitches.
- 3x more likely to land: Human-written pitches were about three times more likely to get featured than pitches written entirely by AI, according to HARO's analysis.
- 35% filter out AI: 35 percent of journalists have switched on HARO's filter that blocks pitches flagged as AI-generated. The filter is off by default.
- 42 pitches per request: Connectively, HARO's sister platform, sees an average of 42 responses for every journalist request, a sign that volume alone rarely wins.
- Most journalists I speak with say that they can tell when a pitch is AI generated or not, just from a blink test.
- Farmiloe's advice to publicists follows the HARO acronym itself: be Helpful, be Authentic, be Relevant, be On time. Authentic doesn't mean avoiding AI entirely. It means the pitch that goes out has to clear a bar higher than what a generic AI draft would produce on its own.
- Where AI answers pull their citations
- Editorial sources: ~67%
- Brand-owned content: 1.7%
- From the Featured AI Citation Report, cited in the HARO interview
- Featured AI Citation Report, by the numbers
- The pattern matters for communicators, Farmiloe said: media mentions help with model mentions. Earned coverage from independent editorial outlets showed up far more often in AI answers than content brands publish on their own sites.
- HARO's safeguards
- AI detection on every pitch: HARO partners with Pangram to screen every submission and runs added checks for fully automated senders.
- Human review before send: Every journalist request is reviewed and approved by a person, and websites must meet a minimum Moz domain authority of 20; about 32 percent of requests are rejected at that step.
- A ban every 23 minutes: HARO bans an account roughly every 23 minutes for spam or terms-of-service violations. An AI score alone never triggers a ban.
Related companies: Featured, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), Connectively
Source: press.featured.com/media-mention/human-pitches-still-beat-ai-pitches-haro-data-shows/
Cite as: Featured / Brett Farmiloe, “Human Pitches Still Beat AI Pitches, HARO Data Shows”, October 16, 2026.