Since Featured relaunched HARO (Help a Reporter Out) in April 2025, the service has sent over 100 million emails connecting journalists with sources. New data from HARO provides a revealing look at how AI, spam, and crowded inboxes are reshaping the relationship between journalists and PR professionals.
The 2026 statistics from HARO show that as communication volumes soar, both journalists and sources are prioritizing filtering and authenticity. Notably, 21% of pitches submitted through HARO are now entirely AI-generated. This trend has led to a significant backlash: 35% of journalists now actively block AI-generated pitches when submitting requests.
The data also highlights the challenges of maintaining quality in a high-volume environment. HARO bans a user every 23 minutes, primarily for spam and terms of service violations. Additionally, 32% of journalist requests are rejected during the approval process after a review of the journalist, publication, and request for quality and legitimacy.
Perhaps the most striking finding is the disparity in success rates. Human-written pitches are approximately three times more likely to be used by journalists compared to AI-generated ones. This underscores the value of genuine expertise and personalized responses in an era of increasing automation.
“Human-written pitches are about 3x more likely to get featured than AI-written ones,” said Brett Farmiloe, CEO of HARO. “The sources who stand out typically come from fully human teams who can provide credible information, respond to what the journalist actually asked for, and make the journalist’s job easier. As inboxes get more crowded, being helpful becomes the differentiator.”
To maintain standards, every pitch submitted through HARO is analyzed using AI detection technology provided by Pangram. Journalists can also report unhelpful pitches, triggering a manual review by the HARO team.
These insights point to a growing challenge for PR professionals: as access to journalists increases, earning their attention becomes harder. In increasingly crowded inboxes, relevance, credibility, and expertise are becoming critical ways for sources to stand out. The data suggests that while AI can aid in scaling efforts, it cannot replace the nuanced understanding and authenticity that human communication provides.
