TLDR: A 2025 report by the Reuters Institute reveals a significant increase in public awareness and use of generative AI, with 61% having used it. While people are comfortable with AI for back-end tasks like grammar checks, comfort levels drop for content creation. Public trust in AI-generated news remains low, with only 33% believing journalists consistently check AI outputs, and many expect AI to make news less trustworthy, despite making it cheaper and more up-to-date.
A comprehensive study, ‘Generative AI and News Report 2025: How People Think About AI’s Role in Journalism and Society,’ conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, sheds light on evolving public perceptions of artificial intelligence in the news industry. The report, authored by Felix Simon, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Richard Fletcher, surveyed individuals across six countries—Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, the UK, and the US—between June and July 2025.
The findings indicate a substantial surge in public engagement with generative AI. The proportion of people who have used a standalone generative AI system, such as ChatGPT, jumped from 40% in 2024 to 61% in 2025, with weekly usage nearly doubling from 18% to 34%. ChatGPT remains the most popular system, with 22% weekly usage, though adoption varies significantly by age. Information-seeking has emerged as the primary use-case for AI, now at 24% weekly usage, surpassing media creation, while specialized uses like news consumption remain limited at 6%.
Public comfort levels with AI’s application in news vary significantly depending on the task. People are most comfortable with AI being used for back-end functions, such as editing spelling and grammar (55%) or translation (53%). However, comfort decreases sharply for tasks involving more creative or sensitive content, such as rewriting content for different audiences (30%), creating realistic images when no photo exists (26%), and the use of artificial presenters or authors (19%). These attitudes align closely with those of news professionals.
Despite the increasing presence of AI, public confidence in human oversight within newsrooms is limited. Only 33% of respondents believe journalists ‘always’ or ‘often’ check AI outputs before publishing. This figure is higher in Japan (42%) and Argentina (44%) but lower in the UK (25%). Trust in news strongly correlates with this perception; 57% of those who ‘strongly trust’ news believe such checks occur, compared to just 19% among strong distrusters. The public also expects responsible AI use to vary by news outlet.
Perceptions of AI’s impact on news quality are mixed. While many anticipate AI will make news cheaper to produce and more up-to-date, there is a strong expectation that it will also make news less transparent and, crucially, less trustworthy. Only a small percentage (8%) across the six countries believe AI will make news more worth paying for, with 41% thinking it will make it less valuable. Geographically, people in Japan and Argentina generally hold more positive views about AI’s impact on news quality, whereas those in the UK tend to be more negative.
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Awareness of AI tools has also surged, with 90% of people having heard of at least one of 13 AI tools, up from 78% in 2024. ChatGPT is the most well-known brand, and it is also the most trusted among AI platforms, with 29% trusting it, ahead of Gemini (18%), Copilot (12%), and Meta AI (12%). Most people perceive that generative AI is already widely used, especially by social media companies (67%), search engine companies (68%), and news media (51%).
