ChatGPT pulls more of its answers from news outlets than any other major AI platform, according to new data from Semrush.
Semrush tracked source citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Mode, and AI Overviews from January through July. Every month, news sites made up a bigger slice of ChatGPT's cited sources than they did for any of the rivals. The pattern held in both the US and the UK, though British users saw an even stronger tilt toward news citations. Semrush didn't break out which specific outlets benefited or by how much.
That matters because publishers have spent two years arguing AI chatbots siphon off readers without sending traffic back. If ChatGPT really does lean on news content more than Google's AI tools, that's the first platform-level evidence that some chatbots depend on journalism more than others - a detail that should matter in licensing talks and the lawsuits already underway between publishers and AI companies.
Call it a leaderboard nobody asked for: being the AI product most reliant on news coverage isn't obviously a compliment while the two sides are still arguing over who owes whom.