As the weekend approaches, some pieces worth reading in the context of the crisis facing the BBC – to contextualise & what the implications might be. An overview of expert takes, incl. @rasmuskleis.bsky.social, @julieposetti.bsky.social & @renateschroeder.bsky.social in El Pais buff.ly/p8LSmQs

Oxford University: We are giving everyone access to ChatGPT for free… Also Oxford University:…but not to 5 Pro and Deep Research 🤷‍♂️

Today we premiered our new monthly newsletter on AI and the future of news, led by journalist @marinaadami.bsky.social and researcher @felixsimon.bsky.social A perfect example of what @reutersinstitute.bsky.social is about: connecting practice and research Read it here mailchi.mp/politics.ox....

✨New working paper on the trade-offs involved in AI transparency in news 🤖📝 Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.

✨New working paper on the trade-offs involved in AI transparency in news 🤖📝 Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.

The answer is easy and it’s “No”

Time to let the cat out of the bag that I’ve been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, alongside my position at the Reuters Institute.

This year’s call for applications for the Prize Post Doctoral Fellowships in Politics at Nuffield College is now live! It’s a fantastic opportunity for newly minted PhDs to spend three years in a wonderful academic environment: www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/the-college/...

*tries not to make pun about the commenters going nuclear*

Amid many a silly “free speech” panic, here is a genuinely chilling case … Sheffield Hallam professor accuses the institution of negotiating “directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

With the official prognosis giving one additional seat to PVV and one to FvD compared to the ext poll, the narrative should really not be that the Netherlands/Jetten has beaten the radical right. The far right bloc remains remarkably stable.

Our new report provides a typology of news creators, based on analysis of 24 countries The report, by Nic Newman, @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social @mitalilive.bsky.social @richardfletcher.bsky.social, makes a distinction between those who focus on hard news and those touching news-adjacent topics

A thread worth reading. Nuanced assessment of a headline grabbing report.

The EBU just published a new report on how well consumer AI chatbots function as gateways to news by public service media – an interesting piece, but with some big problems in my view that make me question its usefulness. buff.ly/X9ident

Cowards

The “videotisation” of everything? Interesting move by the NYT, especially amid changing consumption habits in younger cohorts. Question is will this attract/keep more young folk & how much AI will be in the mix? www.axios.com/2025/10/21/n...

If this happened at a steel plant there would be talk of government bail out to secure jobs

For younger people gen AI offers a very different news experience. Fews are using it for news right now, but it could grow in the coming years. Full @reutersinstitute.bsky.social report by @felixsimon.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social and me. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/generative-a...

Last week I posted a thread on how people are using generative AI - bsky.app/profile/rich... This thread is on how people use gen AI for news, specifically. Though getting information is emerging as the key use of gen AI, only 6%on average across 🇦🇷🇩🇰🇫🇷🇯🇵🇬🇧🇺🇸 use it for news weekly, doubling since 2024.

New survey research from @felixsimon.bsky.social and colleagues at the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social explores how people in six countries are engaging with AI in everyday life. 👇

"The generative AI wave isn’t coming — it’s already here, and it’s reshaping how the public finds information." @felixsimon.bsky.social has written about our recent report, including rapid growth in how many (and how) people use generative AI to get information www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/peop...

No time to read the long version of our new @reutersinstitute.bsky.social research on use & views around GenAI, information, and news in 6 countries? Then read the summary, just out with @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/peop...

🚨✨ Publication alert: How do people in 6 countries (🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇦🇷 🇩🇰 🇯🇵 ) use AI 🤖 and think about it in the context of information, news, and institutions? Our new @reutersinstitute.bsky.social survey research (n ≈ 12,000) with @richardfletcher.bsky.social & @rasmuskleis.bsky.social explores this.

If you are interested in how this all varies by country (in some cases, it does), check out the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social report, by @felixsimon.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social and myself. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/generative-a...

Finally, some data on trust. It's difficult to interpret data on trust in gen AI systems at the moment because there is limited public awareness - with the exception of ChatGPT, 50% or more have not even heard of them.

No surprises that there's an age gap in the use of gen AI, with use more widespread among younger people. But this only applies to standalone systems like ChatGPT. For AI embedded in other products, like Meta AI and Copilot, there's no age gap because the host product is used by people of all ages.

On the use of specific systems, ChatGPT is still the most widely used (22% weekly) - ahead of Gemini (11%), Meta AI (9%) and Copilot (6%). Worth remembering that the public's use of a lot of the tools favoured by experts, like Claude and Perplexity, is still very marginal - 1% weekly.

A thread on how people's use of generative AI has changed in the last year - based on survey data from 6 countries (🇬🇧🇺🇸🇫🇷🇩🇰🇯🇵🇦🇷 ). First, gen AI use has grown rapidly. Most people have tried out gen AI at least once (61%), and 34% now use it on a weekly basis - roughly doubling from 18% a year ago.

✨🤖 Check out our new research on AI use around news and information and attitudes towards AI in society and journalism – with @rasmuskleis.bsky.social & @richardfletcher.bsky.social

Finally, as search engines increasingly integrate AI generated answers, we asked about trust in these – the trust scores are high across the board, with higher net positives than any of the standalone tools. All this and more in the report here reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/generative-a... 3/3

Asked whether they trust different AI tools, the picture is very differentiated, with net positive trust scores for e.g. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, but negatives for those that are seen as part of various social media companies 2/3

How do people think different sectors’ use of generative AI will change their experience of interacting with them? More optimists than pessimists for e.g. science and search engines, but more pessimists than optimists for news media, government, and – especially – politicians 1/3

🚨✨ Publication alert: How do people in 6 countries (🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇦🇷 🇩🇰 🇯🇵 ) use AI 🤖 and think about it in the context of information, news, and institutions? Our new @reutersinstitute.bsky.social survey research (n ≈ 12,000) with @richardfletcher.bsky.social & @rasmuskleis.bsky.social explores this.

🧵 New publication: How do people feel about regulating #AI in election campaigns? 🧵 In a new article, @adrauc.bsky.social, @kunkakom.bsky.social, and I examine when and why people support stronger AI regulation in political competition. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 👇

Toured the new Oxford Humanities building today and it’s…humongous.

🗞️ 🤖 Weekend reading anyone? For the launch of @transformernews.ai as a standalone publication, they invited me to contribute a piece on what persuasive AI might mean for democracy and elections. Here’s the result… buff.ly/OJsNmpK

🗞️ 🤖 Weekend reading anyone? For the launch of @transformernews.ai as a standalone publication, they invited me to contribute a piece on what persuasive AI might mean for democracy and elections. Here’s the result… buff.ly/OJsNmpK

Had a great time soft-launching our forthcoming research report on generative AI and news (out October 7th) at the b° future festival in Germany's former capital, Bonn – wonderfully organised by the Bonn Institute team around Ellen Heinrich. Auf Wiedersehen

Another one of those weeks in which the same news media engaged in lots of (often justified) handwringing about errors in AI outputs abysmally fail in properly framing the misleading or plainly false statements by various political elites and leaders.

cho·ti·nerd | ˈtʃoʊ.ti.nɜrd | verb (transitive) To systematically and subtly dismantle someone’s arguments or credibility during an interview with such surgical precision that the subject remains unaware of how they have completely ridiculed themselves until after the fact.

Freedom of speech is now apparently woke in the US and needs to be cancelled, am I getting this right?

Always a bit awkward to do these posts but I was delighted to learn at the Future of Journalism Conference last week that I won @digitaljournalism.bsky.social's Outstanding Article of the Year Award for my paper on how AI reshapes the news' dependency on platforms companies.

Interesting to see this against audience views on the topic. Scepticism of AI use in news remains, but growing acceptance of AI assisted news-creation (which this might fall under) – see @reutersinstitute.bsky.social data from this year and last year on comfort around such uses.

Feels like as good a time as any to get out the old Frank Wilhoit adage that US conservatism today basically amounts to the idea that “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”

Finally found where they make them

Using the big technology of the 19th century to get to Cardiff to talk about the big technology of the 21st (Train ride is bumpy, somehow there’s a metaphor in this) — looking forward to the Future of Journalism conference and seeing colleagues old and new.

The birth of a new edition: Exclusive behind the scenes footage of how the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social Digital News Report gets made.

Perhaps the final meeting from the old @oii.ox.ac.uk buildings before the institute moves to its new haunt at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities – featuring the great Chico Kerche, @rocher.lc, Franziska Hafner and @lujain.bsky.social to talk about information and news within LLMs.

To my French friends, a quick question: Is AI Overviews available in France? If not, why?

Think a lot of people assume that if the AI bubble bursts, the things they hate will go away, and I worry that’s almost exactly the wrong way around