UK workers are spending an estimated £958 million of their own money annually on generative artificial intelligence (genAI) tools to perform their jobs, while one in five UK adults is turning to AI services to keep up with the news.
The findings, contained in separate reports by Deloitte and Ofcom, highlight growing reliance on AI among workers and consumers, with adoption increasingly moving ahead of formal workplace policies and traditional routes to news.
A Deloitte study of 25,000 UK workers found that 63% knowingly used genAI for their jobs, while 17% had paid for at least one AI tool themselves. Almost a quarter said they used genAI every day.
However, the rapid adoption of the technology has raised concerns over workplace training, oversight and responsible use.
Nearly a third of workers said they used genAI without their employer’s knowledge, while 65% said their organisation lacked convincing leadership on how AI should be used.
Around half of workplace genAI users also said they had received no formal training on using the technology safely and effectively.
Despite the concerns, workers reported that genAI saved them an average of 70 minutes a week. However, 23% said there was a stigma around using the technology, while 64% of weekly users were concerned that managers might believe AI could perform their jobs.
Workplace use remained largely centred on routine tasks, with 43% of users saying they deployed genAI to search for information or draft emails, while 31% used it to generate summaries.
“The challenge is no longer getting people to use genAI, it’s how businesses meet this growing demand in a way that is secure, responsible and creates lasting value,” said Hayley McKelvey, chief AI officer at Deloitte UK.
AI becomes a route to news
The Ofcom survey found that 21% of UK adults had used an AI app or service to access news during the previous month, with ChatGPT the most popular AI service for this purpose, reaching 13% of adults.
AI services formed part of a wider shift towards digital intermediaries for accessing news. Online intermediaries, including social media, search engines, news aggregators and AI tools, were used by 73% of adults to access news, compared with 57% who accessed news directly through publishers’ websites and apps.
However, trust in AI-generated news remains lower than trust in human-written journalism.
Around 56% of adults said they were less trusting of an AI-written news story than one written by a human.
Ian Macrae, director of market intelligence at Ofcom, said the changing pattern of news consumption meant public service media “must continue to evolve their distribution strategies to continue to meet audiences where they are”.
