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

LONDON, Sept 16 — 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 ($1.4 billion) a year of their own ‌money, according to research published by Deloitte on Wednesday.

• 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% of people surveyed were using GenAI without their employers' knowledge — known as shadow AI — and 17% 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.

• Some ⁠25,000 workers ​were surveyed by Ipsos for Deloitte.($1 = 0.7417 pounds)

(Reporting by Paul Sandle. Editing by ​Mark Potter)

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