AI and the ‘Elevator Pitch’

In designing this assignment, I wanted to give students a concrete, real-world communication task—the elevator pitch—and use it to explore both the practical and rhetorical dimensions of working with generative AI. We often talk about “audience” and “voice” in Communication Studies, but AI tools like ChatGPT present a new opportunity and a new challenge: How can students use these tools to refine their messages without losing the sense of who they are?

This assignment asks students to draft a pitch on their own first—to root the work in their lived experiences, tone, and phrasing—and then use AI to revise it with attention to clarity, tone, and impact. We take a two-step revision approach, incorporating both machine and peer feedback, to highlight that writing and revision are dialogic processes. Students also reflect meta-critically on how AI influenced their message—what it improved, where it missed the mark, and how their voice changed or stayed intact.

My goal was to make AI feel less like a shortcut and more like a rhetorical tool—one that invites critique, collaboration, and experimentation. The assignment is scaffolded to show that AI can support communication work, but that students must direct and shape it actively. They finish with a revised written pitch, a class presentation, and a reflection that doubles as a critical conversation about authorship, professionalism, and emerging technologies. The framework is adaptable for other disciplines—public speaking, marketing, management, or even creative writing—and could work wherever students are developing a professional identity and refining how they present themselves to others.