This year’s digital news reporting marked a notable milestone. For the first time, social and video networks have overtaken news publishers as sources of news globally.
As audiences continue to migrate to digital intermediaries for news, AI chatbots are emerging as the next hot platform. According to the 2026 survey results, one in 10 people now use an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Google Gemini for their weekly news, an increase of 3 percent from last year. (This question only asks about standalone chatbots, not about AI within other platforms, such as an overview of AI in search.)
However, this increase is not universal. A comparison across the 48 markets covered shows that growth tends to be concentrated in Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. For example, weekly usage doubled in South Korea from 7% to 14%, in Peru from 6% to 11%, and in Spain from 4% to 8%. Meanwhile, in the US, usage has remained steady at 6%. Usage also remained at similar levels to last year in Northern and Western European countries such as the UK (4%), Germany (5%) and Denmark (5%), although usage in these countries was already below the global average.
When it comes to news, chatbot usage is surprisingly similar to more general platform usage. Countries where people already rely heavily on search engines, social networks, video networks, and news aggregators also tend to have higher levels of AI chatbot usage for news. This suggests that chatbots may become more popular based on existing trends in using the platform for news.
Another reason why adoption varies so much by location may be trust. Markets with higher trust in AI chatbots for news also tend to report higher levels of usage. Furthermore, the relationship between trust and usage is significantly stronger for AI than that observed for social media. This is probably because using a chatbot requires a more active choice. Unlike social media or video networks, where people often accidentally stumble upon news while doing other things, chatbots require users to intentionally provide prompts or ask questions, making trust a more important consideration.
A similar pattern can be seen at the individual level. While trust in news from AI chatbots tends to be low among the general population (only 20% of those surveyed said they trust news output from AI chatbots most of the time, compared to 37% who trust news in general), that number more than doubles to 44% when focusing on people who actually use AI chatbots for news. This gap show shows how much of the credibility decline is caused by people who don’t use technology for news. However, this does indicate how well users think its performance is reasonably good.
Age remains one of the strongest boundaries for the use of chatbots in news, reflecting the rapid rise in adoption of AI among young people more generally. 17 percent of people aged 18-24 use an AI chatbot for weekly news, compared to just 5 percent of people aged 55 and over. However, last year’s growth was primarily driven by adults ages 25 to 54. This shows that the use of AI news is expanding beyond early adopters. Those who already consume news also have higher usage rates: 18% of the most avid news users compared to 7% of those who only get their news once a day.
However, adoption rates only tell part of the story. To understand how AI chatbots fit into people’s news habits, we also asked users what they do with AI chatbots.
The most common usage across 45 markets is asking follow-up questions about news articles, cited by 42% of chatbot news users. But people also use these tools for a variety of other news-related tasks. About a third say they just ask a chatbot for the latest news (35%). Similar numbers say they use them to summarize a story (34%) or to assess whether a source is trustworthy (33%). And 3 in 10 (30%) use chatbots to help them understand their stories. Taken together, the findings suggest that people are not only using chatbots to receive news, but also to navigate, interpret, evaluate, and simplify it.
The preferred use of chatbots in news also varies by country. For example, in Taiwan and South Korea, where news consumption is already heavily mediated by platforms and aggregators, getting the latest news is the most commonly cited use. In Canada and the UK, summaries are rated most highly, while in Austria, Germany, and Japan, users are more likely to say they use chatbots to help them understand complex stories.
Elsewhere, trust considerations appear to shape usage. In Hong Kong and Turkey, where perceptions of press freedom are relatively low, and in low-trust markets such as Hungary and Romania, the use of AI to evaluate news sources is one of the most frequently reported uses. These differences highlight that, like news consumption itself, the role played by AI chatbots is highly dependent on the information environment in which they are used.
New uses for AI chatbots present both challenges and opportunities for publishers. Some popular applications highlight audience needs that journalism can best serve. But part of chatbots’ appeal lies in their ability to provide personalized, low-effort responses at scale, which may be difficult for individual publishers to match. As AI becomes more integrated into people’s habits, not just search and other platforms, the way forward may not be to replicate the capabilities of chatbots, but to enhance what makes journalism distinctive and valuable in an increasingly platform-driven information environment.
For now, AI chatbots remain a secondary news source for most users, with only 1% globally designating them as their primary news source. However, growth has been particularly rapid among young people, suggesting that their influence over news consumption is likely to continue to grow, even if that growth looks different across markets.
Amy Ross Arguedas is a media researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Reuters Institute for Journalism.
