Every organization is pouring money into AI right now, and almost none of them know what their people are actually doing with it’: Study reveals employees are using their personal AI accounts at work, raising a whole host of issues | Daily Reports Online
- Two-thirds of AI use on personal accounts is actually for work purposes
- Workers are also using company-provided tools to ask their personal questions
- Clunky enterprise authentication makes approved tools harder to access in an instant
New research from Harmonic has claimed nearly two-thirds (64.5%) of all activity on personal and free AI accounts is actually for work purposes, meaning there’s a significant amount of AI use that’s going totally undetected by companies.
At the same time, enterprise-grade accounts are being used for personal questions, meaning employees and AI are meeting wherever is convenient regardless of security policies. In fact, nearly half (45.6%) of all personal AI activity is happening on licensed plans that are being paid for by companies.
In reality, workers aren’t treating work AI and personal AI as separate things, instead bringing their tasks to whichever AI tool is already open or easily accessible on their device, regardless of whether it’s employer-provided or personal, free or paid.
Undetected work on personal AI is creating a visibility gap
Harmonic’s research serves to highlight the visibility gap that’s emerging as AI adoption spreads, with legal and governance workers having both the highest usage and highest visibility. These workers account for around one-fifth (19.5%) of all AI hours across teams, and 81% of this usage happens on approved tools.
Go-to-market teams are the second-highest users, at 17.5%, but only 39% of GTM AI activity happens on company-approved tools, resulting in poor visibility. But that’s still twice as much visibility as operations teams, where not even a fifth (18%) of activity runs on enterprise plans.
As for why AI’s being used at work, the clearest purpose is efficiency and automation (47%), which ranks far ahead of decision support (20%) and risk and compliance (20%). Revenue and growth (7%) and innovation (6%) are less common.
The true measure of use is minutes, not queries
Where Harmonic’s research differs from other studies is in its use of ‘minutes’ rather than ‘total queries’, which it argues offers a much truer reflection of usage patterns. Longer sessions indicate heavier data exposure, it says, and Claude comes out on top when it comes to actual minutes (10m 12s) compared with ChatGPT (5m 53s).
This is especially problematic when workers choose to use their own personal AI accounts, because sensitive company information and business context remains in their personal AI history even when they leave a company. Organizations don’t even have the legal or technical powers to wipe or recover that data, leading to permanent IP loss.
The path of least resistance
Harmonic explained that many companies implement strict and clunky authentication processes for enterprise AI tools, making personal tools far easier to use. Popular personal tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity also require little more than a Google account (or similar) to sign in.
All of this while companies pay a premium for licenses that are barely getting used – Microsoft 365 Copilot is commonly deployed at $30 per user per month; ChatGPT Business plans come in at $20-25 per month.
“Every organization is pouring money into AI right now, and almost none of them know what their people are actually doing with it,” Harmonic Security CEO Alastair Paterson summarized, noting that this is the first study of its type to uncover how AI is “actually being used at work.”
Clearly, the issue isn’t necessarily with the provision of wrong tools, but rather ease of access. Looking ahead, companies are advised to adopt universal single sign-on (SSO) to make logging in easier. But Harmonic still challenges the ‘one size fits all’ approach, urging employers to consider workflows and give the right tools to the right teams.
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