- Two-thirds of the use of artificial intelligence on personal accounts is actually for work purposes
- Employees also use tools provided by the company to ask their personal questions
- Clunky enterprise authentication makes authorized tools harder to access at a glance
New research from Harmonic has claimed that nearly two-thirds (64.5%) of all activity on personal and free AI accounts is actually for work purposes, meaning there is a significant amount of AI use that goes completely undetected by businesses.
At the same time, enterprise-grade accounts are used for personal matters, meaning employees and AI meet wherever it’s convenient, regardless of security policies. In fact, nearly half (45.6%) of all personal AI activity happens on licensed plans paid for by businesses.
In reality, workers do not treat work AI and personal AI as separate things, instead they bring their tasks to the AI tool already open or readily available on their device, whether employer-provided or personal, free or paid.
Undiscovered work with personal AI creates a visible gap
Harmonic’s research serves to highlight the visibility gap emerging as AI adoption spreads, with legal and executive staff having both the highest usage and visibility. These workers account for about a fifth (19.5%) of all AI hours across teams, and 81% of that use is on approved tools.
Go-to-market teams are the second highest users at 17.5%, but only 39% of GTM AI activity happens on enterprise-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.
In terms of why AIs are being used at work, the clearest purpose is efficiency and automation (47%), 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 usage is minutes, not queries
Where Harmonic’s research differs from other studies is in its use of ‘minutes’ rather than ‘total queries’, which it claims provides 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 to ChatGPT (5m 53s).
This is particularly 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 do not even have the legal or technical powers to delete or recover this data, leading to permanent IP loss.
The path of least resistance
Harmonic explained that many companies implement strict and cumbersome approval 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 log in.
All this while companies pay a premium for licenses that are hardly ever used – Microsoft 365 Copilot is commonly deployed at $30 per user per month; ChatGPT Business plans cost $20-25 per month.
“All organizations are pouring money into artificial intelligence right now, and almost none of them know what their people are actually doing with it,” summarized Alastair Paterson, CEO of Harmonic Security, noting that this is the first study of its kind to reveal how artificial intelligence “is actually being used at work.”
Clearly, the problem is not necessarily the provision of the wrong tools, but rather ease of access. Looking ahead, companies are advised to use universal single sign-on (SSO) to make login easier. But Harmonic still challenges the ‘one size fits all’ approach, encouraging employers to consider workflows and provide the right tools for the right teams.
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