What you will find in the article:
- 21% of UK adults use AI for news access.
- 56% distrust AI-generated news compared to human-written stories.
- 73% access news through online intermediaries like social media.
- BBC is the most-used news provider, reaching 80% of adults.
- Television remains important for election news, used by 62%.
One in five UK adults are using artificial intelligence services to access news, according to Ofcom’s latest study of news consumption.
The News Report 2026 found that 21% of adults had used an AI app or service for news during the previous month, with ChatGPT the most widely used at 13%.
However, audiences remain cautious about AI-generated journalism. More than half of adults (56%) said they would trust an AI-written news story less than one written by a person.
The findings form part of a wider shift towards online intermediaries as gateways to news. Ofcom found 73% of adults accessed news through services including social media, video-sharing platforms, search engines, aggregators and AI, compared with 57% who used publishers’ websites and apps directly.
Online sources were used for news by 82% of adults during the month, ahead of television at 79%. Of an estimated 72 minutes spent consuming news each day, an average 34 minutes was online and 18 minutes on television.
Social media and video-sharing platforms were used for news by 60% of adults. Facebook remains the most commonly encountered platform for news, at 39%, but YouTube has narrowed the gap, reaching 33%.
Traditional broadcasters nevertheless continue to have substantial reach online. The BBC remains the UK’s most-used news provider, reaching 80% of adults across its own services and third-party platforms. Two-thirds of 16 to 24-year-olds encountered BBC News during the month.
Ofcom also found traditional television retained a particularly important role during elections. Following May’s local, mayoral, Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections, television was used for election news by 62% of those aware of the elections, compared with 33% for online sources.
Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s director of market intelligence, said: “In today’s ‘always on’ environment, many people don’t go direct to the news, the news is coming to them through different online intermediaries, increasingly AI-enabled.”
He said public service media would need to continue evolving their distribution strategies to reach audiences as news discovery increasingly moves to third-party platforms.
Source: broadbandtvnews.com