Media study 2026: almost 60 percent of Germans use AI applications

The use of AI applications has risen markedly among the German population. As t3n reported on 24 September 2026 about the ARD/ZDF media study 2026, 59 percent of respondents aged 14 and over said they used AI tools at least occasionally.

How the data was collected

For the study, GIM Heidelberg surveyed 2,462 German-speaking people on behalf of ARD/ZDF-Forschung. Fieldwork ran in January and April 2026. The figures therefore rest on self-reporting. On technology topics, that method tends to understate heavy use rather than overstate it.

The jump in regular use

37 percent fall into the regular-use group, meaning at least once a week. A year earlier that figure stood at 22 percent. The rise of more than half within a year is the most striking single number in the survey.

The age distribution is very uneven. Among 14 to 29 year olds, 92 percent use AI applications at least occasionally, and 68 percent reach for them at least weekly. Among people aged 70 and over, the figures are 15 and 8 percent respectively.

Scepticism remains part of the use

Use and distrust do not rule each other out. 54 percent of users said they treat generated texts and images with scepticism and check them for factual errors. The "ratings against ratings" narrative familiar from television, use on one side and doubt on the other, dissolves in practice: many people check what the machine puts in front of them.

For the media houses that commissioned the study, the figure is also a finding about themselves. If more than half the population considers that machine-generated content may be wrong, provenance records and transparency grow in importance. The EU AI Act has only just begun to regulate that field with the transparency obligations under Article 50.

Streaming remains stable

Alongside AI use, the study notes that the reach of streaming services has stabilised at the level it reached. Growth in devices and access routes is thus shifting increasingly into users' routines rather than into the question of access.

37 percent weekly use in the first survey year to ask these questions, a pace the media industry rarely experiences.