One in five Brits use AI to follow the news 

One in five adults across the UK are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT to keep up to date with the news, according to a report from Ofcom.  

Ian McCrae, director of market intelligence at Ofcom, said: “In today’s ‘always on’ environment, most people don’t go direct to the news, the news is coming to them through different online intermediaries, increasingly AI-enabled.” 

ChatGPT, the AI tool produced by American firm OpenAI, was the most popular service, with 13 per cent of adults turning to the chatbot to keep up with the news. But despite the rise in AI usage for news consumption, Ofcom highlights that over half of adults report that they are less trustful of an AI-written news story than one written by a person.   

In the report, Ofcom wrote that the growing use of AI tools has led to an increasingly “diverse and decentralised news ecosystem” that operates outside “traditional regulatory frameworks” to compete for audience attention. 

The news comes amid concern over AI development speeds, with Dario Amodei, head of AI giant Anthropic, proposing a three-point plan to regulate AI which included efforts by the “US and other democratic governments” to coordinate with authoritarian governments to slow down development.

US President Donald Trump called the idea “a SICK conspiracy” in a post on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, writing that the only control that AI needs is a “high IQ” president. 

The report also found that almost three-quarters of adults access news through an online intermediary compared to around six in ten who go directly to the online apps and sites of news publishers. But research conducted in the aftermath of May’s local, mayoral, Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections found that traditional media remained important during major democratic events.

Television was the most-used source of election news, reaching 62 per cent of people who were aware of the elections, nearly double the reach of online sources at 33 per cent.