What Shapes Audience Openness to Artificial Intelligence in the News? The Case of Chilean Journalism

The integration of AI into journalism has generated growing debate about its implications for news production, yet empirical evidence from the Global South remains limited. This study examines how Chilean audiences perceive different degrees of AI involvement in journalism and how transparency, trust in news, and media literacy are associated with their willingness to consume AI-related news. Drawing on an online survey of 9,262 adults in Chile, the findings reveal a pattern of conditional acceptance of AI in journalism. While audiences strongly reject fully automated journalism, openness increases significantly when AI is framed as a tool supporting human journalists. In parallel, while transparency is widely demanded as a normative requirement, it does not, by itself, guarantee higher willingness to consume AI-generated news. Additionally, the study found that trust in the news and media literacy significantly correlate with audience openness to AI, operating interactively: higher levels of trust are associated with greater acceptance of AI only among individuals with medium or high levels of media literacy. Overall, the results suggest that AI tends to amplify pre-existing evaluations of journalism rather than reshaping them, highlighting the central role of institutional legitimacy and media literacy in shaping public responses to AI-driven journalism.