AI chatbots and TikTok reshape how young people get their daily news – RFI
Artificial intelligence is changing the way people get their news, with more readers turning to chatbots like ChatGPT to stay up to date. At the same time, nearly half of young adults now rely on platforms such as TikTok as their main source of news.
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The findings come from the Reuters Institute’s annual Digital News Report, released this week. The Oxford University-affiliated study surveyed nearly 97,000 people across 48 countries to track how global news habits are shifting.
The study found that a notable number of people are using AI chatbots to read headlines and get news updates – a shift described by the institute’s director Mitali Mukherjee as a “new chapter” in the way audiences consume information.
While only 7 percent overall say they use AI chatbots to find news, that number rises among younger audiences – 12 percent of under-35s and 15 percent of under-25s now rely on tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Meta’s Llama for their news.
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“Personalised, bite-sized and quick – that’s how younger audiences want their news, and AI tools are stepping in to deliver exactly that,” Mukherjee noted.
Beyond reading headlines, many readers are turning to AI for more complex tasks: 27 percent use it to summarise news articles, 24 percent for translations, and 21 percent for recommendations on what to read next. Nearly one in five have quizzed AI directly about current events.
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However, trust remains a sticking point. Many respondents to the survey said they worry AI could make news reporting less transparent and more prone to errors.
The technology’s so-called “hallucinations” – when a chatbot fabricates information – continue to worry both readers and journalists.
Despite these risks some news organisations see opportunities within AI usage. In France, the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has signed a deal with French AI firm Mistral, giving its AI models access to AFP’s news archive.
However, other global media outlets, such as the New York Times, have taken a more combative stance, launching copyright lawsuits against AI developers including OpenAI for allegedly misusing their content without permission.
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The report also highlighted how traditional media – TV, radio, newspapers and even conventional news websites – is losing ground to social networks and video-sharing platforms.
Almost half of 18 to 24-year-olds now say they get most of their news via social media – particularly TikTok, which dominates among young audiences in countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand.
Despite the upheaval since Elon Musk’s takeover and rebranding of Twitter, the social media platform X remains a go-to for many seeking news. “Many more right-leaning users, especially young men, have flocked to X, while some progressive users have drifted away,” the report noted.
In the United States, 23 percent of people said they use X for news – up eight percentage points from last year – with a similar trend observed in Australia and Poland.
In contrast, alternatives to X such as Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon have yet to gain significant traction for news, with each capturing just 2 percent or less of the market.
(with newswires)
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