Let the technology handle the repetitive admin. Make sure the people are still the point.
By Rebecca Bultsma
Remember when the pandemic ran an accidental experiment on events? How much of an event could happen on a screen? Quite a lot, it turned out. We could watch a keynote from home. We could pitch, plan an event, hold meetings, and join webinars, all without physically interacting with another human being.
Then the world reopened, and people went back to in-person events anyway. Virtual everything was technically possible, but it did not offer quite the same meaningful experience. People want to be with other people. They want those post-session conversations, the IRL meetups, the chance to finally put a face to an email address, or the opportunity for a chance encounter that turns into a useful relationship. People came back to in-person events because being in a room with other people still does something a screen will never be able to fully reproduce.
The better AI gets at moving information around, the more obvious it becomes that events were never really about training and transferring information. Should event planners use AI? Of course they should. As much as possible, but in the right places, within the right context, and in ways that don’t take away from the parts of events that people most look forward to.
Put It to Work Behind the Scenes
There is no prize for doing every administrative task by hand. Used well, AI helps clear space for what we really want to be doing. That is where AI really earns its keep. Use it where it works best, at scale and with speed, especially on repetitive or data-heavy tasks.
Lean in hard on things like drafting emails, session descriptions, run-of-show outlines, social posts, and proposals (then edit them). Use it for logistics support. New AI tools are showing up every day to help with scheduling optimization, budget tracking, attendee registration insights, vendor comparisons, and data summarization. AI is an incredible thought partner for brainstorming early ideas, generating mood board-style visuals for discussion, spotting patterns in past event data, or finding gaps in your thinking.
AI can be incredible for removing friction, and when we use it well and strategically, we unlock more capacity for the work a planner was actually hired to do — and probably enjoys more. Things like really listening to the client, understanding the vibe of a room, spotting a problem before it spirals out of control, and creating an experience people remember for the right reasons.
The caution here is to treat AI like a tireless junior intern: great for drafts and sorting, but terrible as the final decision-maker.
When a Shortcut Becomes a Blind Spot
Some things should never be handed over to AI. When money, safety, reputation, or legal issues are on the line, a human must own the outcome, and that human needs to be you.
A few other red flags indicating you may have leaned on AI a little too heavily:
- You or your team show up to an event underprepared or overwhelmed because AI handled the prep, and you skimmed rather than properly reviewing the output.
- Clients and vendors start catching mistakes that slipped through unreviewed or surface-reviewed AI output, such as hallucinated room numbers, wrong dates, invented vendors, or incorrect pricing.
- You’ve automated so much client and community communication that relationships feel transactional or distant, or people aren’t reading your messages because they are too wordy or generic — AI slop.
- Too many of your creative elements, from themes to experiential ideas, start and end with an AI prompt, resulting in generic concepts that lack memorable differentiation.
- You feed everything, including sensitive data such as attendee lists, dietary needs, contracts, NDAs, and personally identifiable information, into public or consumer AI tools, creating privacy, compliance, and legal exposure.
- Clients develop unrealistic expectations from AI-generated images that ignore physics, venue constraints, budgets, safety codes, load-in times, or insurance realities, such as floating installations, impossible floral colors, structures that defy gravity, or elements that simply will not fit in the freight elevator.
When it’s all said and done, AI should make the planner more available, not more absent. That sounds obvious. But this is where the shortcut gets expensive. The risks come from automation bias. A polished answer can look credible enough to pass without anyone really looking at it.
The problem is not speed. It is what speed makes easier to miss. Events are full of details that look interchangeable until they are not: a venue constraint, a speaker preference, a relationship with a sponsor, or a last-minute change in travel plans. The planner who knows the full picture can make a good call. A tool working from partial information cannot.
What the Saved Time Is For
And this is the part the software cannot see. The goal is an event where the people on the team have more room to be present and responsive when it counts. Because what else are we saving all this time for?
Keep the rule simple. If an AI mistake would leave you scrambling in front of a client, a vendor, or a room full of attendees, it needs a human owner. Review every output, and pay extra attention to anything public-facing, client-facing, financial, or safety-related. If private information is involved, use tools your organization has approved and whose data terms you understand. Be transparent when using AI-generated imagery, and manage expectations around feasibility. Make sure your team is clear on where AI should and shouldn’t be used. Build simple internal rules or a short AI policy.
And use the time AI saves to double down on the most meaningful parts of what you do. Have deeper client conversations, lean into your creative vision, build more personal relationships with vendors, and be more present during the event itself.
Which brings us back to the room. Let AI take the first pass. Let it sort, summarize, and handle the repetitive administrative work. Then use the time it gives back for the conversation with the client, the site walk, the check-in with a nervous speaker, and the thousand small judgments that turn a run of show into a real experience.
That is where the line is for me. AI has gone too far when it makes the people responsible for an event less attentive to the people inside it. Until then, it may be doing exactly what a good tool should do: clearing space for the real reasons we gather in the first place.
MEET
Rebecca Bultsma is an AI ethicist, speaker and contributing writer from Calgary, Alberta. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.
(Images generated by ChatGPT)
