• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 7, 2025

People worldwide are more aware of generative AI (GenAI) than they were, judging by a six-country study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISI).

Of the individuals surveyed, 61% have personally used GenAI, up from 40% last year. And 54% use it weekly, compared to 18% in the prior year. 

Still, females are much less likely to think GenAI will improve their lives.  

Globally, 51% say GenAI is used by news media, 67% by social media companies and 68% by search engine companies. The average across all sectors is 41%. 

When it comes to journalism, a mere 12% are comfortable with news produced entirely by GenAI.  In contrast, 21% trust AI when there’s a ‘human in the loop’, 43% when a human leads with some helps from AI and 62% when news is entirely human-made, up 4% from 2024. 

The respondents are most accepting of back-end uses of AI in news—for example, spelling and grammar (55%) and translation (53%), But comfort levels are lower for tasks like rewriting content for different audiences (30%), creating a realistic image when no photo exists (26%), and for artificial presenters/authors (19%). 

These attitudes are remarkably close to those of news professionals: The red line is using AI to write news. 

Meanwhile, 77% of the respondents access news daily, but only 19% see AI labels daily and 28% weekly. 

Among AI platforms, ChatGPT is the leader in terms of trust—29% trust it, versus 19% for Gemini, 12% for Copilot and 12% for Meta.

Most people think newsrooms use AI. But only 33% believe journalists always or often check AI outputs prior to publication. 

On a more positive note, 57% of those who “strongly trust” news think such checks happen. Only 19% of news distrusters agree. 

YouGov surveyed 2090 USA residents between June 6-19, 2025 on behalf of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISI) at the University of Oxford and the Department of Communications at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, YouGov polled over 2,000 residents apiece in Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan and the UK in June and July.

The authors of the study, titled Generative AI and News Report 2025: How People Think About AI’s Role in Journalism and Society, are Felix Simon, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Richard Fletcher.