Scrolling with (dis)comfort on AI-generated news: exploring group differences and the role of social media use in Portugal

Purpose. The increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in news production raises important questions about audience acceptance. This research explores group differences in comfort levels toward news generated by AI and news produced with AI assistance, focusing on the effect of the main news sources. It is hypothesized that using social media as a main gateway for news may influence comfort with AI-generated news due to the users’ familiarity with algorithm personalization. Methodology. A quantitative analysis was conducted on a representative sample of 2012 Portuguese internet users. Nonparametric tests were applied for group comparisons, and a composite AI Comfort Index was developed to enable parametric testing of interaction effects between awareness of AI and main source of news. Results and Conclusions. The analysis identifies higher comfort levels when AI is presented as an assistant rather than the primary generator of the news. The results highlight significant differences among groups based on demographic and trust-related factors. Additionally, significant effects are detected in the comparison between groups with lower and higher levels of AI awareness and between social media and traditional news users. Despite not statistically significant, the interaction effect reveals that where users with higher awareness of AI who relied on social media as their main source of news shows a noticeable increase in comfort with AI-generated news. Contribution. These findings underscore the importance of considering the main source of news in discussions of AI acceptance in journalism, particularly as current developments point out that new AI powered resources, namely chatbots, could play an important role in the news distribution.