British workers are spending nearly £1 billion a year of their own money on AI tools for work, because their employers are not providing them.
According to Deloitte UK’s inaugural GenAI Workforce Survey, published on 15 September,2026 and conducted by Ipsos among 25,000 workers, one in six workers in Britain is now paying for at least one GenAI tool — such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot — to help do their job. The collective bill is estimated at £958 million, or about $1.4 billion.
The study shows adoption is employee-led. Two-thirds of workers have tried GenAI for work and nearly a quarter use it daily. Some 31 per cent admitted to using it without their employer’s knowledge — so-called shadow AI.
Hayley McKelvey, chief AI officer, Deloitte UK stated that UK workers were demonstrating that they did not want to wait for permission to use GenAI, and that many were already using free tools or paying for premium versions themselves to get work done.
Workers are mostly using AI for everyday tasks — searching for information, drafting emails and creating summaries — saving an average of 70 minutes a week, which largely goes back into doing more work.
Deloitte partner Paul Lee noted that GenAI had quickly become part of everyday working life, yet for many workers its role remained relatively basic, focussed on searching and drafting rather than supporting more complex work. He added that organisations that would gain the greatest advantage would be those that moved beyond simply providing access and focused on helping people use tools with appropriate guardrails and purpose.
65 per cent of users say their organisation lacks clear leadership on how AI should be used, while 23 per cent feel stigma around using it.
