The Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report shows that more people are turning to AI chatbots for news, but the shift is not translating into stronger traffic for publishers. The report, published Monday, says chatbot use for news has climbed, yet there is no clear evidence that it is sending users back to news sites and apps in the same way traditional referrals once did.
The annual study, based on 48 markets, adds another sign that news consumption is moving further away from direct visits to publishers and toward intermediated platforms. The institute said social media and video networks are now, on average, the most widely used online source for news, ahead of news organizations’ own websites and apps.
According to the report, 10% of respondents now use AI chatbots for news, up from 7% a year earlier. Adoption is strongest among people already highly interested in news and among younger adults. Sixteen percent of respondents under 35 said they use chatbots to get news.
Growth was not uniform across countries. The report said use of AI chatbots for news doubled in South Korea, Greece and Spain, while markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany saw no increase over the past year.
One reason users give for turning to chatbots is the ability to dig deeper into a topic. The most commonly cited feature was the chance to ask follow-up questions, mentioned by 42% of respondents.
The report frames chatbots as part of a broader shift in how audiences access information. Rather than moving directly from a search or alert to a publisher’s article, more users are encountering news through tools that summarize, explain or repackage it before they ever reach the original source.
The Reuters Institute said the larger trend is a steady move toward social media and video-led platforms. Across the markets surveyed, 54% of respondents said they use social media and video networks for news, compared with 51% who use news organizations’ own websites and apps.
Online news video is now a mainstream habit. The report said 77% of people globally watch news video online each week, and in 45 markets more people watch news video online than on broadcast television. The main growth is happening on third-party platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
This change is affecting publishers’ own video strategies. Mainstream news organizations saw video consumption on their own sites and apps fall by 5 percentage points this year, according to the report.
The report also found that trust in news has dropped to its lowest level since the institute began tracking it in 2015. Overall trust stands at 37%, with declines in 29 of the 48 markets studied. Concerns about misinformation also rose, reaching 62% on average.
At the same time, interest in news has continued to soften. The share of people describing themselves as extremely or very interested in news has fallen by 13 percentage points on average since 2021. A quarter of respondents now say they are only casual or passive news users.
Despite those shifts, the report says core ideas such as impartiality still matter to audiences. Nearly half of respondents said they prefer news that does not take sides, suggesting that even as consumption habits change, expectations for journalism have not disappeared.
For publishers, the pattern points to a difficult tradeoff. Audiences are exploring new tools and formats, including AI chatbots, but the Reuters Institute says the broader migration toward platform-based news continues to weaken the direct relationship between readers and news organizations.