UK workers spend nearly £1 billion of their own money on AI for work, Deloitte finds

[LONDON] One is six workers in Britain is paying for an AI tool to help them do their job, at a total cost of nearly £1 billion (S$1.8 billion) a year of their own money, according to research published by Deloitte on Wednesday (Sep 16).

The inaugural GenAI Workforce Survey found that two thirds of workers had tried AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, and nearly a quarter were using them daily in their jobs.

Workers were adopting AI faster than their employers were making tools available, the responses suggested.

Some 31 per cent of people surveyed were using GenAI without their employers’ knowledge — known as shadow AI — and 17 per cent were paying to use at least one GenAI tool themselves for work.

“UK workers are showing they don’t want to wait for permission to use GenAI,” said Deloitte UK’s chief AI officer Hayley McKelvey.

“Many are already using free tools or pay for premium versions themselves to help them get work done.”

The most popular uses for AI at work were searching for information, drafting emails and creating summaries, the survey found, saving on average 70 minutes a week.

Deloitte partner Paul Lee said GenAI had quickly become part of everyday working life. “Yet for many workers its role remains relatively basic, focused on searching for information and drafting content rather than supporting more complex work,” he said.

“The organisations that gain the greatest advantage from AI will be those that move beyond simply providing access to tools and focus on helping people use them with the appropriate guardrails and purpose,” he added.

SEE ALSO

Anthropic to open Singapore office in October, sees it as ‘standout market’ for Claude

Meta’s Zuckerberg weighs in on AI safety; favours evaluators over slowdown

Google DeepMind staffer says AI may ‘kill us all’ in exit post

Some 25,000 workers were surveyed by Ipsos for Deloitte. REUTERS