AI adoption by UK journalists and their newsrooms: surveying applications, approaches, and attitudes

Thurman, Neil ; Thäsler-Kordonouri, Sina und Fletcher, Richard (2025): AI adoption by UK journalists and their newsrooms: surveying applications, approaches, and attitudes.

Abstract

This report is based on a survey conducted between August and November 2024 with a broadly representative sample of 1,004 UK journalists. The survey was primarily focused on whether and how journalists and news organisations use artificial intelligence (AI), and how it relates to other aspects of their work. Our analysis of the data produced the following key findings:

On whether and how UK journalists and their newsrooms use AI: More than half (56%) of UK journalists use AI professionally at least once a week, another 27% use it less frequently, and only 16% have never used it for journalistic tasks. UK journalists most frequently use AI for language-processing tasks, specifically ‘transcription/captioning’ (49% of UK journalists use AI for this task at least monthly), ‘translation’ (33%), and ‘grammar checking/copy-editing’ (30%). AI is also used for more substantive journalistic tasks such as ‘story research’ (22% use AI for this task at least monthly), ‘idea generation/brainstorming’ (16%), ‘generating parts of text articles (e.g. headlines)’ (16%), ‘fact-checking/verification/source assessment’ (12%), and ‘generating first drafts of text articles’ (10%). ‘Generating parts of text articles (e.g. headlines)’ and ‘story research’ come equal fourth out of 31 journalistic tasks when those tasks are ranked according to the proportions of UK journalists using AI to perform them on a daily basis. Few UK journalists use AI for audio or video generation – only 4% and 2% respectively do so at least monthly. In terms of broad task groups, journalists in the UK use AI most frequently for ‘initial newsgathering’ followed by ‘information processing or analysis’, ‘journalistic writing or rewriting’, ‘backend production or management tasks’, and ‘audio or image/graphic generation or editing’.

On which UK journalists use AI: Younger journalists and journalists identifying as male use AI professionally somewhat more frequently. Journalists with higher levels of management responsibility use AI professionally more frequently. Professional AI use is linked to a journalist’s reporting beat. For example, 43% of business journalists use AI professionally at least weekly compared with 21% of lifestyle journalists. After controlling for age and gender, we found no statistically significant associations between journalists’ contract type (e.g. permanent, fixed term, freelance) and the frequency with which they worked with AI in their journalistic tasks, indicative of how access to some AI tools has been democratised. Being involved in the production of journalism in any of three media formats – ‘text’, ‘graphics, cartoons, illustrations, or animation’, and ‘video’ – was associated with more frequent AI use. Involvement in the production of photographs reversed that association. The more media formats UK journalists produced in, the more frequent their professional use of AI.

On links to job satisfaction: UK journalists who are more frequent AI users are more likely to believe they work on low-level tasks too frequently. UK journalists who are more frequent AI users are not more satisfied with the amount of time they work on complex and creative tasks.

On UK journalists’ attitudes towards AI: UK journalists tend to be pessimistic about the effect of AI on journalism: 62% see it as a ‘large’ or ‘very large’ threat to journalism, and only 15% see it as a ‘large’ or ‘very large’ opportunity. Almost all groups in the data are more likely to see AI as a threat than as an opportunity but more senior journalists, those with higher levels of AI knowledge, and those that regularly use AI are more likely than average to see it as an opportunity (and usually less as a threat). More than half of UK journalists are ‘extremely concerned’ about the potential negative impact of AI on public trust in journalism (60%), on the value of accuracy (57%), and on the originality of journalistic content (54%). They are less concerned about the inadvertent exposure of personal data (25%). Differences in levels of concern between different demographic groups are small (5 percentage points or less), but concern is higher among those with more AI knowledge and considerably lower among those that use AI for journalistic tasks on a daily basis.

On levels of AI integration in newsrooms: Most UK journalists (60%) say that there has been some AI integration in their newsroom, but integration is overwhelmingly described as ‘limited’, with very few reporting extensive or full integration. Differences between news outlet types are small, but AI integration is more extensive in newspapers, commercial media (as opposed to publicly owned media), and conglomerates (as opposed to independent outlets). UK journalists overwhelmingly expect their main outlet’s use of AI to increase in the future (63 percentage point difference between those that think it will increase vs decrease), and are more likely to describe their outlet’s stance on AI to be supportive (39%) rather than opposed (20%).

On news outlets’ approaches towards AI: Most UK journalists (60%) say their main news outlet has established AI protocols or guidelines around at least one of the issues we asked about, such as ‘human oversight and control’ (44%), ‘data privacy and security’ (43%), and ‘transparency’ (42%). UK journalists are less likely to say their main news outlet has established protocols or guidelines around AI ‘bias and fairness’ (27%). Around one third of UK journalists (32%) say that their main news outlet provides training on AI technologies. Most UK journalists (57%) say that their main news outlet only uses third-party AI tools, with fewer reporting that they only use tools developed in-house (9%) or a combination of both (34%). UK journalists whose main outlet is publicly owned or part of a conglomerate –disproportionately broadcasters or newspapers – are more likely to say their outlet has established AI protocols and guidelines, provides AI training, and uses AI tools developed in-house.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (IfKW)
• Themengebiete: 000 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke > 070 Publizistische Medien, Journalismus, Verlagswesen
• Ort: Oxford
• Sprache: Englisch