Generative AI has gone mainstream within a year. In six countries tracked since 2024, weekly use rose from 34 percent in 2025 to 51 percent in 2026, and daily use from 16 to 28 percent, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford reported on October 29, 2026. The report, by Felix Simon, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Richard Fletcher, is based on YouGov surveys of about 2,000 people each in nine countries, from Argentina and Japan to the UK and the US. Its verdict: generative AI “has become part of routine life for most people in high-income democracies”.
Looking things up is now the top use – 38 percent do it weekly, up from 11 percent in 2024 – and users are satisfied: 75 percent of those who ask AI factual questions trust the answers. ChatGPT leads with 34 percent weekly use, followed by Google’s Gemini at 24 percent; Claude reached 7 percent.
The skeptics are in the data too: 67 percent prefer news written entirely by human journalists. But 45 percent are comfortable with news made mostly by humans with some help from AI. That points the way for newsrooms – AI as an openly declared assistant that makes good journalism faster, not a replacement for it.
Written with Claude, made by Anthropic.
Sources: Felix Simon, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Richard Fletcher: Generative AI and News Report 2026: From standalone tools to information infrastructure (Reuters Institute) (October 29, 2026)
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