UK workers pay £958m a year for their own GenAI tools, Deloitte finds
Deloitte’s first UK GenAI Workforce Survey finds one in six users pays for at least one tool personally and nearly a third uses it without the employer knowing, a gap between demand and official provision that partners can measure
- 63% of UK working adults aged 18 to 70 say they knowingly use generative AI for work and 24% use it every day.
- 17% of users pay for at least one generative AI tool themselves, which Deloitte values at £958m a year.
- 31% of users say they use generative AI without their employer’s knowledge.
- 65% of users report a lack of convincing leadership on how generative AI should be used in their organization.
- The survey covered 25,000 workers, with fieldwork by Ipsos UK from 7 May to 10 June 2026.
For technology leaders, the risk is company data leaving through personal accounts no one has vetted. The response is to provide, not ban: license an approved tool, set a short acceptable-use policy and offer training, then give staff a route to declare what they already use. An anonymous internal count of personal AI subscriptions is a quick way to size both the budget case and the risk.
“The story here isn’t that workers are using GenAI, it’s that they are using it despite limited training, patchy guidance and, in some cases, without their employer’s knowledge.”Paul Lee, partner and head of industry insight, Deloitte UK
Deloitte UK published its first GenAI Workforce Survey on 16 September, estimating that UK workers spend £958m a year of their own money on generative AI tools for work. The figure is Deloitte’s own: it comes from the firm’s survey of 25,000 working adults aged 18 to 70, with online fieldwork run by Ipsos UK between 7 May and 10 June 2026.
Free tools first, then a personal card
Much of that use runs on software the employer never bought. Deloitte’s breakdown has 46% of those users using free tools at work, 34% using external tools their employer pays for and 17% using something built in-house. One in six (17%) users pays for at least one tool out of their own pocket, which is where the £958m estimate comes from. The firm puts the average time saved at 70 minutes a week, with searching for information and drafting emails the most common uses.
Deloitte ties the private spend to what employers have failed to provide. Around half of the workers using generative AI say they have had no formal training in using it safely, nearly a quarter (23%) think there is a stigma attached to using it and the firm says those who sense that stigma are more likely to conceal their use. Raconteur reported the findings on 23 September, setting the personal spend against the slower pace of employers’ official rollouts.
Sources
- Deloitte UK, “British workers spend nearly £1bn of their own money on GenAI for work, landmark Deloitte research finds”, press release, 16 September 2026. https://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/about/press-room/british-workers-spend-one-billion-pounds-of-their-own-money-on-gen-ai-for-work.html
- Raconteur, “UK staff spend £1b on shadow AI as official rollouts lag”, 23 September 2026. https://www.raconteur.net/ai/uk-staff-spend-1b-on-shadow-ai-as-official-rollouts-lag
- Deloitte UK, GenAI Workforce Survey hub, September 2026. https://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/issues/generative-ai/genai-workforce-survey.html
