More people are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) bots and search functions for news coverage or to verify information they suspect may be false, according to a new study.
The annual Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report found people are turning to chatbots for news “for the first time,” with nearly 1 in 10 consumers globally using an AI bot to “check something important in the news online that they suspected might be false.”
A plurality of respondents in the survey, 38 percent, said they would go to “a news source” they trust to check something they see in the news while 35 percent said they would turn to an official source, like a government website.
Search engines (33 percent) and fact-checking websites (25 percent) also ranked highly as tools to verify information, while nearly 1 in 5 said they’d turn to someone they know and roughly the same percentage would rely on comments from others.
Seventeen percent said they would look to Wikipedia for verifiable information, and 14 percent indicated they would use social media to check info.
Among those specifically searching online to double-check information, 26 percent of respondents said they would turn to Wikipedia to verify information — the same percentage as those who listed traditional news outlets and journalists.
The survey found younger people were much more likely than older respondents to rely on AI chatbots, social media and comments from others, with those 18-34 nearly twice as likely as older adults to utilize AI bots. Use of bots was comparable across political leanings.
The report comes as more major news outlets are signing partnership deals with AI providers and turning away from social media platforms as a vehicle for driving traffic to web pages and earning advertising revenue.
Media academics and journalism experts have been warning for years about the potential threats AI poses to the news business, particularly local and breaking news coverage.
