The second observatory dedicated to the audience of information sites generated by AI, unveiled Tuesday July 7 by Le Geste, Médiamétrie and Next, shows that the people most exposed to this unverified information are over 50 years old.
Information sites generated by AI are now consulted by nearly 40% of French people according to Geste, Médiamétrie and Next, who published on Tuesday July 7 the second edition of their observatory dedicated to the audiences of these sites. During the first edition of the observatory, unveiled last December, this use concerned nearly a quarter of French people.
The measurement of this second edition reflects the audiences of 232 information sites generated by AI, identified by Next among the sites appearing in the Top 1,000 of Google Discover or recommended by the MSN news portal, consulted by Médiamétrie panelists between April 2025 and April 2026. In April 2026, these sites brought together 23 million unique monthly visitors, or 39.1% of French people, compared to 21.9 million in April 2025. But it is above all the number of daily unique visitors, 3.5 million in April 2026, which has exploded, by 35%, in one year.
While most (84%) of these sites have modest audiences of less than 250,000 unique visitors per month, 5% still have more than 2 million unique visitors per month, some going up to more than 6 million. A single publisher can have several sites of this type, the audiences per publisher can exceed 15 million unique monthly visitors for the most extreme example.
Based on the repository of sites established by Next and integrated into Médiamétrie’s Internet Global measurement, the study shows that this audience is mainly made up of people aged 50 and over, in particular those aged 65 and over: 55% of French people aged 65 and over consult at least one GenAI site in the month, 49.9% do so in the 50-64 age group and 36.7% among those aged 25-49. years, which is considerable. Only 15-24 year olds under-consume these sites, compared to the population average (39.1%), with 12% of Internet users in this age group consulting at least one AI-generated site during the month.
Despite their strong growth, information sites generated by AI display levels of engagement significantly lower than those of traditional news media: the time spent per page is 5.4 times lower, and the number of pages consulted per visitor is divided by 3. Important point: their traffic comes mainly from Google (62%), ahead of Meta (17%), which “confirms the central role of platforms in the dissemination of this content”, indicate the authors in a press release.
“This study confirms the lasting presence of information sites generated by AI in the French digital landscape. If their audience is growing rapidly, it is because these players are largely supported by search engines and social platforms, which play a determining role in their visibility and distribution to the general public. Enough to allow us to question the recommendation mechanisms which now structure access to information, the transparency of the editorial processes at work behind this content, as well as the conditions competition with the media which finance the production of professional and verified information”, declares Laure de Lataillade, CEO of Geste.
In total, nearly 15,000 information sites generated by AI have to date been identified by Next in France, a figure which has practically doubled since December, when 8,800 were detected.
