Consumer Trust in AI–Human News Collaborative Continuum: Preferences and Influencing Factors by News Production Phases

Abstract

AI has become increasingly relevant to the media sector, especially for news media companies considering the integration of this technology into their production processes. While the application of AI promises productivity gains, the impact on consumers’ perceptions of the resulting news and the level of AI integration accepted by the market has not been well studied. Our research focused on the analysis of news consumers’ preferred level of AI integration, AI news trust, and AI news usage intentions linked to the application of the technology in the discovery/information-gathering and writing/editing phases. By connecting a comprehensive set of factors influencing the perception of news and AI, we approached this gap through structural equation modeling, presenting an overview of consumers’ responses to AI integration into news production processes. Our research showed that while participants generally prefer lower levels of AI integration into both phases of production, news trust and usage intention can even increase as AI enters the production process—as long as humans remain in the lead. These findings provide researchers and news media managers with a first overview of consumers’ responses to news production augmentation and its implications for news perception in the market.