Most UK journalists perceive AI as a threat, new RISJ research reveals

While more than half (56%) of UK journalists use AI professionally at least once a week, most (62%) perceive it as a threat - according to new research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ). 

These are some of the key findings in RISJ’s latest report into UK journalists’ use of AI – ‘AI adoption by UK journalists and their newsrooms: surveying applications, approaches, and attitudes’. 

The report is part of the Institute’s work on AI and the future of news and is based on the results of a survey conducted between August and November 2024 of over 1,000 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. 

Other key findings include: 

• How often is AI used? Only 16% of UK journalists have never used AI.
• How is it used? The most frequent uses monthly are for language-processing tasks: transcription (49%), translation (33%) and copy-editing (30%). Generating a first draft (10%) and fact-checking (12%) with AI is much less common. Only a small minority use AI for generating audio (4%) or video (2%).
• Who uses it? AI use is more prevalent amongst younger journalists, male journalists and journalists with more management responsibility. There are differences across beats (it’s more prevalent in business than lifestyle) but use is not associated with journalists’ contract type.
• Has AI improved journalists’ job satisfaction? Those using AI more often are more likely to believe they work on low-level tasks too frequently, and they are not more satisfied with the amount of time they work on complex and creative tasks.
• How do journalists perceive AI? Only a small minority of UK journalists (15%) perceive AI as a large opportunity. All groups are pessimistic, but those with more authority and those who know more about AI or use it more regularly are less so.
• What do journalists fear? Most prevalent concerns include the loss of public trust in journalism (with 60% saying they are “extremely concerned”), accuracy (57%), and the originality of journalistic content (54%).
• How is AI used in newsrooms? 60% of UK journalists say that there has been some AI integration in their newsroom, although many of them describe it as limited. However, most of them expect their outlet’s use of AI to increase in the future (63 percentage point difference between those that think it will increase vs decrease).
• Which guidelines and training do newsrooms provide? 60% of UK journalists say their main news outlet has established AI guidelines around at least one of the issues we asked about. The most common were ‘human oversight’ (44%), ‘data privacy and security’ (43%) and ‘transparency’ (42%). Only 32% say their outlet provides AI training.
• Do newsrooms build their own AI tools? Only 9% of UK journalists say their main news outlet only uses tools developed in-house, with 57% saying their newsroom only uses third-party AI tools and 34% saying it uses a combination of both.
• Does newsroom size matter? Journalists working for independent newsrooms report lower levels of AI integration, higher reliance on third-party AI tools, and expect less future AI integration than journalists working for conglomerates. 

The report was written by Dr Neil Thurman, Professor of Communication in the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich, Germany; Sina Thäsler-Kordonouri, teaching and research associate in the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW) at LMU Munich, Germany; and Dr Richard Fletcher, RISJ Director of Research and Deputy Director.
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is dedicated to exploring the future of journalism worldwide.