Machine learning can solve PR problems by tackling fake news and cutting through the clutter. A business needs to be noticed, in today's times, to attract more opportunities. PR makes an impressive social presence possible for any business. But PR is a tough nut to crack and experts are now using machine learning to solve PR problems. Before jumping to the PR problems, we should first understand what public relation (PR) is.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Oct. 25 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com First baseman Ali Sanchez was standing in the on-deck circle so he had a great vantage point of the two-strike breaking ball to Jacob Heyward. It finished so low that by the time it reached the catcher it nearly bounced in the dirt. Sanchez -- like everybody else who was watching this game on a Tuesday night in the Arizona Fall League -- had an immediate mental reaction.

If the fragmented media environment is a sick patient, machine learning may be the cure. That was the proposition Andrew Heyward, visiting scholar from MIT's Media Laboratory and former president of CBS News, outlined in his presentation, "Can Robots Solve Your PR Problems?" at the New York offices of agency Makovsky on Feb. 6. Heyward and his colleagues at MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Social Machines are studying artificial intelligence solutions to modern plights of the PR practitioner: fake news, polarization, the public's lack of faith in journalism and short attention spans, to name a few. Heyward's group uses machine learning algorithms as their primary tool to map and track the overall health of the public sphere. And soon, PR pros may be able to use those AI insights to make better decisions--whether they're managing a crisis or planning a national campaign. Here are four PR applications of AI and machine learning shared by Heyward.