The way people find news has begun to change rapidly. Data from Similarweb shows that more users are turning to ChatGPT for updates on current events. Over the past six months, the number of monthly active users on the ChatGPT app rose by 116 percent. Web use of the service climbed by 52% in the same period.
Shift from Search to AI Prompts
Between January 2024 and May 2025, news‑related prompts in ChatGPT grew by 212%. At the same time, similar Google search queries fell by five percent. Only in early 2025 did this change begin to gain momentum. Rather than using the search words in the browser, the users are now communicating with an AI assistant and engaging it in questions.
Most of such prompts require real-time information on stocks, finance, sports, or the weather. The fastest growth has come from topics like politics, inflation, the economy, and climate issues. This change suggests that people want explanations and context rather than just breaking news headlines.
Impact on News Publishers
ChatGPT now refers readers to select news sites more than ever. Visits from ChatGPT to partner outlets jumped from under one million between January and May 2024 to over twenty‑five million in the same months of 2025. The biggest gains went to Reuters, the New York Post, Business Insider, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. Some publishers, such as CNN and the New York Times, saw little benefit. Those outlets often limit access to their content for AI services.
Google’s own tools have also shifted traffic. Since the launch of AI Overviews in May 2024, the share of zero‑click news searches rose from fifty‑six percent to sixty‑nine percent. As a result, organic visits to news sites dropped from more than 2.3 billion to under 1.7 billion visits. This decline poses a serious threat to many publishers who rely on search referrals for revenue.
Publishers in the European Union have begun to push back against Google’s practices. They argue that AI overviews and zero‑click results hurt smaller outlets by keeping readers on Google pages. As ChatGPT and other AI tools grow in popularity, the pressure on all tech platforms to share revenue with news creators may increase as well.
The rapid rise in AI‑driven news access shows how quickly reader habits can change. News outlets and tech companies now face a choice. They can adapt their business models for an era of AI summaries or risk losing a generation of news consumers. As ChatGPT usage continues to grow, the future of online journalism may depend on new partnerships and fairer ways to share the value of content.
