Public Remains Wary of AI in Journalism
amsterdam, woensdag, 8 oktober 2025.
Despite the increasing use of AI in journalism worldwide, the public remains sceptical. According to the Generative AI and News Report 2025 from the Reuters Institute, only 12% of respondents are comfortable with news fully generated by AI, while 62% prefer news that is entirely written by humans. Most respondents view AI as a means to make news cheaper and more up-to-date, but also as something that reduces reliability and transparency.
Wary Despite Increased Usage
Despite the rising trend in the use of AI in journalism, the public remains wary. According to the Generative AI and News Report 2025 from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, only 12% of respondents are comfortable with news that is fully generated by AI. This percentage rises to 21% if there is human oversight, and to 43% if the news is mostly written by humans with AI assistance. 62% of respondents feel most at ease with news that is entirely written by humans, an increase of 4% compared to last year [1].
Advantages and Disadvantages of AI in Journalism
The public primarily views AI as a means to make news cheaper and more current. However, there are also concerns about its impact on reliability and transparency. On average across the six countries surveyed, 39% of respondents believe AI makes news cheaper, 22% find it more current, 8% less transparent, and 19% less reliable [2].
Acceptance by Task
The acceptance of AI varies significantly depending on the task it is expected to perform. Respondents are most comfortable with the use of AI for spell-checking and grammar-checking (55%), translations (53%), and creating headlines (41%). They are, however, uncomfortable with rewriting texts (30%), generating realistic images (26%), and using AI presenters (19%) [1].
Trust and Control
Trust in the news plays a crucial role in perceptions of AI. 57% of respondents who strongly trust the news believe that journalists always or often review AI-generated content, compared to 19% of those who distrust the news. Only 19% of respondents see daily transparency about AI usage through labels, and 9% see this weekly [1].
Practical Use
In practice, AI is increasingly being used for various journalistic tasks. For example, the use of AI for spelling and grammar has risen from 43% in 2024 to 51% in 2025, an increase of 8 percentage points [2]. Despite this growth, few news organisations have introduced AI features such as bullet-point summaries and chatbots on a large scale. Only 40% of respondents have ever seen these features on news websites or apps [2].
Country Differences
There are also significant country differences in the perception and acceptance of AI in journalism. Countries such as Japan and Argentina are relatively more positive about the impact of AI, while the United Kingdom is relatively more negative. For example, there are significantly more pessimists in the UK regarding the impact of AI on personal life and society [2].