AI in PR paid off at Babel PR once the agency stopped counting usage and started redesigning its work. 75% of its people used AI daily, but none of it showed up in the P&L. Inna Bondarenko, Founder and CEO of Kalei Labs, explained how they fixed that at aiblLIVE London 2026, with Babel’s Ash Lockett.
They agreed the value drivers first, redesigned proposal writing around human craft, and only then chose the tools. Here is how the six steps worked.
Indicative September figures, as stated on stage by Inna Bondarenko.
Because each person used AI their own way, with no system connecting it. One senior director built a five-step Gemini prompt that produced a near-complete proposal research package. It stayed in his workflow. Bondarenko says firms that measure individual use, such as tools and prompts, struggle to trace it to profit.
It mapped the process end to end, then split it into two tracks. Agents prepare the research and review. People decide, draft and write. An early research agent steered every later output. So the team stripped that step back, and people now come up with and validate the idea.
AI brings the ingredients, but the human is still the cook.
Inna Bondarenko, Founder and CEO, Kalei Labs
No. Writers get an AI summary of the category research that once took hours of searching. They still interview subject matter experts and write every piece. AI then checks facts and writing style, which cuts the rounds of edits senior staff make on junior work.
It’s just giving us all the ingredients we need to produce better work quicker that our clients really like and enjoy.
Ash Lockett, Senior Director and AI Lead, Babel PR
Only after agreeing value and process. It uses what it owns, such as Google Workspace, Gemini and NotebookLM, and buys mature tools such as media monitoring. It builds only context-heavy work. Every workflow and agent has a named owner, client data stays in Babel’s Google environment, and updates run monthly.
Inna Bondarenko is Founder and CEO of Kalei Labs, and previously led an AI transformation programme at a large firm. Ash Lockett is Senior Director and AI Lead at Babel PR. They spoke on the Efficiency track at aiblLIVE London on 20 October 2026.
If your people use AI every day but the results do not show, this is the method to borrow. The full PDF goes deeper than this page, in the speakers’ own words.
For agency leaders, COOs, CFOs and AI leads in professional services. Six pages, about a seven-minute read.
