Younger Canadians drive trust in AI-generated information, poll indicates

OTTAWA — More than a quarter of Canadians — 28 per cent — consider artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT reliable sources of information, a new survey suggests.

Among generation Z Canadians — those born between 1997 and 2012 — 41 per cent say they see AI systems as reliable information sources. That’s not far off from the 49 per cent of gen Z respondents who said they trust stories on news media websites, according to the annual CanTrust Index published by Proof Strategies.

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The high level of trust in AI’s reliability among gen Z respondents appears to be driven by younger males. More than half of gen Z males polled — 54 per cent — expressed a high level of trust in search results from large language models and platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

“Time will tell if it’s OK to trust AI. Certainly now people need to take a skeptical approach and do lots of fact checking,” said Proof Strategies chair Bruce MacLellan.

Florian Martin-Bariteau, research chair in technology and society at the University of Ottawa, said the poll results offer cause for concern because many people don’t understand how generative AI works — and many don’t know that it can give wrong answers.

AI systems don’t understand ideas and concepts the way humans do. Instead, they identify patterns in training data to make predictions, which they use to generate new content. The results can include inaccurate or fabricated information, known as hallucinations.

“They kind of guess … and many times, especially on some important question or a complex issue, they guess wrong,” Martin-Bariteau said. He said the public should be better educated about AI, including how to prompt AI systems for information.

Despite the number of Canadians who trust these systems, the survey found skepticism overall about AI systems as a source of information.

Forty-three per cent of respondents said the increase in AI-generated content would make sources of information less trustworthy, while 22 said AI would increase their level of trust in things they read or see.

The CanTrust Index asks Canadians about their level in trust in various people and institutions. The online survey polled 1,515 Canadians from Jan. 9 to Jan. 18.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The survey asked respondents how willing they are, on a scale of one to seven, to trust various sources to provide reliable information.

Older Canadians reported a level of trust in online news similar to that of gen Z respondents, but much less faith in results from AI large language models. Only 14 per cent of those in the boomer generation — those born between 1946 and 1964 — said they trusted search results from AI systems, compared to 27 per cent of gen Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980) and 36 per cent of millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996).

Those polled tended to report more faith in traditional news sources, with 51 per cent of gen Z and 60 per cent of boomers ranking news in newspapers and TV and radio broadcasts as trusted.

MacLellan noted the survey tracked an increase in the number of Canadians who believe AI will bring benefits to specific sectors. “People do see some advantages coming with AI,” he said.

While a year ago, 22 per cent of those polled said they trusted AI to support retail, that number had since jumped to 39 per cent in the latest poll. The 2025 poll also reported an increase in trust for AI in health care (from 27 to 38 per cent), travel (from 23 to 37 per cent) and financial services (from 29 to 35 per cent).

The survey also asked how the federal government could increase trust among Canadians.

MacLellan said the results indicate that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to hit Canada with sweeping tariffs and somehow absorb it into the United States could offer Ottawa an opportunity.

Nearly two thirds of those polled — 65 per cent — said the federal government could become more trustworthy by standing up to countries that threaten Canadians’ prosperity.

“We’re surprised that there’s all of a sudden a big new factor for trust in Canada, and that’s the threat of Donald Trump, and how he’s unifying Canadians and has the potential to build trust in our government and in our politicians, if they stand up to him effectively,” MacLellan said.

The conflict with the U.S. comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is stepping down, and with a federal election on the horizon.

“We’re going to see changes in our leadership in Ottawa this year, and it’s a clean slate and a new opportunity for building trust,” MacLellan said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 25, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press