New survey by nextMedia.Hamburg

Need for education: More than 80 percent of respondents have no trust in AI-generated content

Hamburg, December 19, 2023 - Artificial intelligence made big waves in the media industry at the end of the year: in the wake of the release of ChatGPT, many experts and media professionals have spoken positively about the potential of artificial intelligence for content creation and research. However, a new survey shows that there is still a great deal of skepticism among the population with regard to AI-generated content.

According to a new survey by the Hamburg-based location initiative nextMedia.Hamburg, Germans are skeptical about the AI innovation wave. 82 percent of respondents say that they have little or no trust in media created with the help of AI. Only 4.1 percent say that they have a great deal of trust in synthetic media. One possible reason for these extreme values could be a lack of awareness of the possibilities and limitations of AI. For example, 13.1% of respondents are undecided about their trust in AI-generated media.

Is AI becoming a generational issue?

There is a slight difference in trust in AI across the age groups of respondents: Among 18-29 year olds, 8.1 percent of respondents still say they have a great deal of trust - a proportion that continues to fall with increasing age, to just under 2.1 percent among the over 65s.

When asked whether they are worried about being manipulated by AI-supported journalism, around 80 percent of respondents also answered in the affirmative, and here the polarization is even more pronounced with increasing age: while only 72.9 percent of 18-29-year-olds agree, the over-65s are more sceptical here too at 85.2 percent

Despite scepticism: the population recognizes clear added value from AI

As sceptical as respondents are about artificial intelligence in the media industry, a relatively large proportion of them recognize the benefits that AI could bring to the industry. At 42 percent, more than a third of respondents can imagine that the increased use of AI would bring benefits - from better personalized recommendations (7.8 percent) to a better user experience (10.4 percent) and faster availability of news (14.9 percent) to lower costs for users (17.2 percent). The difference in age groups is also evident here: Among 18-29-year-olds and 30-39-year-olds, even more than 50 percent of respondents are convinced of the potential benefits of AI, 46.2 and 43.5 percent respectively.

Urgent need for more education

"The survey suggests that there is a need for both more education and regulation on the topic of AI," says Dr. Nina Klaß, Head of nextMedia.Hamburg, commenting on the results. "Some of the questions on AI could not be answered by more than 10 percent of respondents, while others showed a strong skepticism towards AI-generated content. A good opportunity to discuss artificially generated content is the "Themenfestival KI" by nextMedia.Hamburg, where the media and digital industry will spend a week discussing the use of AI."

Interested parties can sign up for the nextMedia.Hamburg newsletter to be the first to be informed about the start of registration for the theme festival. The theme festival is an event of Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft mbH and is implemented in terms of content and organization by nextMedia.Hamburg and its partners Carlsen, Ströer, ARIC, nextReality, Bauer, Rocket Beans and many more. Funded by the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The festival will take place from February 19 - 23, 2023 at SPACE.

(1) The digital market and opinion research company Civey surveyed over 5,000 German citizens on behalf of nextMedia.Hamburg between December 15 and 17, 2023. The statistical error of the overall results is 2.5 percent.