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Title: GenAI Misinformation, Trust, and News Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract: We study how AI-generated misinformation affects demand for trustworthy news, using data from a field experiment by Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), a major German newspaper. Readers were randomly assigned to a treatment that highlighted the difficulty of distinguishing real from AI-generated images. The treatment increased concern over misinformation and reduced trust in all news sources, including SZ itself. Crucially, it also affected post-survey browsing behavior: daily visits to SZ digital content rose by 2.5% in the days following the treatment. In addition, subscriber retention increased by 1.1% over the following five months, corresponding to about a one-third drop in attrition rate. These results are consistent with a model in which the relative value of trustworthy news sources rises with the prevalence of misinformation, boosting engagement with these sources even as trust in news content declines.