AI Use Soars But Readers Don't Trust It in the News

A landmark report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford is sounding an alarm for newsrooms worldwide, including in Mauritius: artificial intelligence is being adopted at record speed, but public trust in AI-generated news content is not keeping pace.

The Generative AI and News Report 2026, authored by Felix Simon, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Richard Fletcher and published in October 2026, surveyed 18,921 people across nine countries: Argentina, Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its findings paint a picture of rapid technological uptake colliding with a deepening credibility crisis.

The numbers on adoption are striking. Weekly use of generative AI tools, meaning AI systems that can produce text, images or other content on demand, reached 51 percent of respondents in 2026. That is up sharply from 34 percent in 2025 and just 18 percent in 2024. Daily use has quadrupled over the same two-year period, rising from 7 percent in 2024 to 28 percent in 2026.

ChatGPT, made by American company OpenAI, remains the dominant tool, used weekly by 34 percent of respondents, a gain of 12 percentage points in a single year. It faces growing competition: Google Gemini reached 24 percent (up 13 points), Microsoft Copilot 11 percent (up 5 points), and Anthropic's Claude 7 percent (up 6 points).

Perhaps most telling is the figure on passive exposure. Some 71 percent of people surveyed said they encounter AI without actively choosing to, because it is built into tools they already use, such as search engines, email platforms or social media feeds. Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said this kind of default integration was happening to them regularly.

For journalism, the challenge is what researchers are calling the trust wall. As media organisations explore AI to speed up reporting, personalise content or cut costs, audiences are growing more cautious rather than more comfortable. Readers increasingly struggle to tell whether a story was written by a human journalist or generated by an algorithm, and many say they are uncomfortable not knowing.

For Mauritius, where the media landscape includes a mix of privately owned newspapers, online platforms and state broadcasters operating in English, French and Creole, these findings carry direct relevance. Local newsrooms experimenting with AI tools face the same credibility questions, in a market where reader trust is already a competitive asset.

What this means: Mauritian media outlets and their readers are navigating the same global tension the Oxford report identifies. Audiences are willing to use AI in their daily lives, but draw a line when it comes to news. For local journalists and editors, transparency about how AI is or is not used in reporting may become as important as the reporting itself. For readers, knowing what questions to ask about the source of a story is becoming an essential media literacy skill.

Source: ION News