In a growing number of countries today, most people consume their news online in a wide array of formats including podcasts, videos and messages on social networking and microblogging platforms. One 2024 study found that about one-in-three adults (across 47 countries) use YouTube for news weekly, and another one-in-five use WhatsApp.

Indeed, in the four countries CNTI surveyed, most people recognize technology as an essential tool for keeping informed and are generally positive about many ways technology aids their access to and consumption of news. They are also generally OK with journalists using technology to help them do their work — with greater caution expressed over uses of AI and image editing in the U.S. and Australia. In both countries, roughly half or more say they are uncomfortable with technology-based image editing in journalism — and more people feel negatively than positively about AI’s impact on journalists’ ability to report.

Digital technologies help people stay informed

Overall, people across all four countries describe digital technology as important for keeping them informed about issues and events. More than 80% of Brazilians and South Africans describe digital technology as very important, as do approximately 70% of Australians and approximately 60% of Americans. At least 90% in each country describe technologies as at least somewhat important. 

As we discuss in a separate chapter, Brazilians and South Africans report more technological challenges in keeping informed and perhaps, as such, find greater value in the ways technology can help, compared with the U.S. and Australia. These findings are also consistent with a separate 2025 study that found Brazilians and South Africans are more optimistic about technology in general than people in Australia or the U.S. and report more openness to using new technologies. Majorities of people in each of the four countries connect regularly to the internet.

People use technology in many ways, including image editing; they are generally comfortable with similar uses by journalists — with some exceptions in the U.S. and Australia

Large swaths of the public across all four countries use technology for content-related tasks in their personal lives. Checking the accuracy of something is by far the most common use of technology in Australia (81%), Brazil (76%) and the United States (79%). In South Africa, using technology “to check the accuracy of something” is equally as common as using technology “to make their writing better” (67% and 66%, respectively).

Roughly half or more across all four countries also report using technology for translation and for image editing in the past year. Majorities of Brazilians and South Africans also report using technology “to make their writing better” and “to summarize a lot of documents,” while fewer Americans and Australians report these uses.

On the whole, people are generally positive about journalists’ ability to use technology for professional purposes. They are particularly supportive of using technology to provide accurate content in an accessible way. Across all four countries surveyed, strong majorities are OK with journalists using technology to (1) check grammar and spelling, (2) summarize a lot of documents, (3) check the accuracy of something and (4) translate content into another language.

Americans and Australians are far less comfortable with journalists’ use of technology to edit images and use of AI in the news production process. While about three-quarters of Brazilians (71%) and South Africans (75%) are comfortable with journalists using technology to edit an image, half or less feel the same way in Australia (35%) or the U.S. (49%). Instead, 61% of Australians and 48% of Americans say they are mostly against it. And image editing is the least acceptable use of technology in all four countries. These findings are consistent with the 2024 Digital News Report, which found that “behind the scenes” uses of AI were most acceptable, while creating content — specifically photographs — was least acceptable. The low levels of acceptance among Australians may also reflect highly publicized examples of news organizations using AI to alter real images that our focus group participants spoke directly about.

People’s attitudes about journalists’ use of image editing technology also seem to be driven by their personal experiences. In every country, people who have used technology to edit images themselves are more likely to support journalists doing so than people who have not — with a roughly twenty percentage point difference or more.

Strong regional differences in attitudes about AI

We then asked two different questions specifically about AI. As there’s no clear consensus on what constitutes “AI” and the term encompasses many different forms of automation, we first asked about specific uses of technology (without mentioning whether AI might or might not be involved) and then asked a broader question about AI’s impact on journalism. 

We asked whether people “think AI will have a mostly positive, negative or neutral impact on journalists’ ability to report on issues and events,” and find a similarly clear split between countries. Brazilians and South Africans mainly express a sense of optimism, with 52% and 46% saying it will mostly have a positive impact. Americans and Australians on the other hand are more negative than positive. Just 15% of Americans and 18% of Australians think it will have a positive impact while 41% and 28% respectively say the impact will mostly be negative. It is also worth noting that large swaths in each of these countries express a neutral sense, 38% and 49% respectively. 

This regional difference is mirrored among journalists CNTI surveyed separately. CNTI’s global study of journalists found that 16% of journalists in the Global North, which includes the U.S. and Australia, felt positively about the impact of AI on enabling an informed public. Meanwhile, about half (48%) of journalists in the Global South felt positively.

It is worth considering various factors that could be at play in these differences. One recent study found a correlation between trust in AI and self-reported understanding of the technology, both of which were higher in emerging countries (including South Africa and Brazil) than high-income ones (including the U.S. and Australia).¹ Another consideration is what people base their knowledge upon. In a recent CNTI conference on communicating to the public about AI in journalism, participants talked about the potential impacts of media coverage on public attitudes.

Considerations around AI in journalism 

Another way to assess people’s views about AI in journalism is to ask whether it matters to them if AI is used in the reporting process. Between roughly a quarter and a third in each country feel it matters a great deal. When we look at who says it matters at least a fair amount, we see more differences between countries with higher responses from the U.S. (62%) and Australia (61%) than Brazil (46%) or South Africa (52%) — again showing a similar divide.

Following the focus group discussions in which participants distinguished between specific AI use cases — weighing a number of factors including the source of the data, the quality of the models and the level of human oversight — we asked here about the importance of five different factors.

A majority of people in all four countries surveyed say that each factor is at least somewhat important when deciding if a journalist’s use of AI is OK. But while South Africans and Brazilians give roughly equal consideration to all five factors, Americans and Australians see two factors (the story topic and format) as less important than the other three (tool quality, what it is used for and human review).

The three factors prioritized across all four countries — tool quality, what it is used for and human review — all speak broadly to ways one can evaluate an AI model’s accuracy. This point also came up consistently in the focus group discussions — especially in terms of what people said they need to be able to rely on journalists for. Focus group participants made the point that if journalists are going to be using an AI model, audiences needed to know that the journalist could vouch for its quality and accuracy.

In this context, focus group participants were particularly uncomfortable with the use of AI for image editing. We also noted that this discomfort was likely related to participants’ description of photos and videos as important elements of “on the scene” reporting that gave them confidence in the quality of news content. Likely because images are perceived as critical to understanding news events, synthetic or AI-altered images were widely seen as unacceptable in news content.