Despite the hype, few Americans rely on ChatGPT for news

AI chatbots like ChatGPT are being used by more people every day, but they haven’t yet become a regular source of news for most Americans, a new survey has found. In fact, there’s a long way to go.

Only about one-in-ten US adults say they get news often (2%) or sometimes (7%) from AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 16% do so rarely.

But most Americans (75%) say they never get news this way. Additionally, fewer than 1% of Americans say they prefer to get news from chatbots rather than from other sources of news.

OpenAI would definitely prefer this number to grow. It says that getting news on ChatGPT is pretty simple: one can get a daily AI-powered news briefing by simply asking the chatbot for a summary of the latest events every morning or afternoon.

But so far, that’s not happening. Even those who read or see news on AI chatbots say they find it hard to trust the information and its quality.

According to Pew, a third of those who use chatbots for news say they generally find it difficult to determine what’s true and what is not. Besides, about half of adults who get news from AI chatbots say they at least sometimes come across news there that they think is inaccurate.

Interestingly, while younger adults are more likely than older adults to use chatbots in general, they’re also more likely to say they see inaccurate news there.

Among Americans who get news from AI chatbots, 59% of adults ages 18 to 29 and 51% of those 30 to 49 say they at least sometimes see news on chatbots they think is inaccurate. By contrast, 43% of those 50 to 64, and 36% of those 65 and older, say the same.

OpenAI itself recently conducted a study of what its millions of users do on ChatGPT and said that most are looking for practical guidance.

To be fair, all this isn’t that surprising. OpenAI itself recently conducted a study of what its millions of users do on ChatGPT and said that most are looking for “practical guidance” – seeking how-to advice, help with homework, or tips on cooking and working out.

The study's results remind us that Google, for instance, is a much larger tech giant. Last year, another Pew Research Center survey found that 23% of US adults often get news from search engines – and, of course, Google Search dominates that particular market.

Even TikTok is far ahead of ChatGPT. A fifth of US adults now regularly get news on TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020.

“In fact, during that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption,” Pew Research Center said last week.

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