PagerDuty Report Finds Two-Thirds (66%) of Office Professionals Have Used Unauthorized AI Tools at Work

PagerDuty, Inc. , a leader in AI-first operations management, published an international survey which illustrates a growing disconnect between employee AI adoption and corporate governance. Left unaddressed, that gap generates measurable risks around data security, workforce trust and talent retention. The PagerDuty Shadow AI Survey was conducted among 1,250 office professionals at organizations with annual revenue of $500 million or more, in non-IT and technology roles, across Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“When over 30% of employees are putting confidential company data into public models, ‘Shadow AI’ becomes a massive enterprise liability,” said Tim Armandpour, CTO at PagerDuty.

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Proliferation of AI Tools – Workplace Policies Lag

Office professionals are growing increasingly confident in their AI expertise, but company policies appear to hinder their adoption of AI tools:

• According to the findings, two-thirds of office professionals report having used AI tools or services at work even though they believed doing so was not permitted under company policy.
• Among those who used AI tools that may not have been allowed, more than half (53%) received informal feedback or guidance to discontinue use, while only 48% faced formal consequences, such as a warning or disciplinary action.
• Respondents are eager to grow their careers with AI but are feeling stifled at the office. 77% believe their companies’ restrictions or policies on AI usage are limiting their professional growth or career mobility, and 75% say they would be likely to look for a new job that offered better AI skills development. This figure climbs to 80% at companies with $1 billion or more in revenue.

Sharing Confidential Information with LLMs

• A clear majority of office professionals (88%) have shared work-related information with public AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
• This widespread exposure includes 43% who have shared emails and other types of correspondence, 40% who have shared meeting notes or summaries, and 34% who have input customer data or information.
• Additionally, 31% of workers have shared financial information or confidential company documents and strategies.

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Additional key findings from the PagerDuty Shadow AI Survey include:

• A Majority of Employees (72%) believe they know AI better than their own tech teams. That figure rises to 80% at billion-dollar enterprises. Senior leaders (77%) are more likely to feel this way than mid-level managers or below (66%).
• Policies are inconsistent and widely perceived as unequal. While 86% of respondents work at organizations they believe have AI policies in place, more than four in five (81%) believe leadership operates under a different set of rules than the rest of the company when it comes to AI. Employees at larger organizations, by both revenue and headcount, are more likely (85% each) to perceive this double standard.
• Personal AI use is driving adoption at work. Nearly nine in 10 office professionals (89%) who have used AI for work say they first encountered the tool in their personal lives. Once adopted, AI use skews heavily toward work: 79% report using AI more often on the job than at home.

“When over 30% of employees are putting confidential company data into public models, ‘Shadow AI’ becomes a massive enterprise liability,” said Tim Armandpour, CTO at PagerDuty. “We know the demand for AI is there because we see it in our own platform – PagerDuty customers are increasingly leveraging our AI and agentic products to solve complex operational challenges securely. The goal for any executive today should not be to slow down AI adoption, but to redirect that energy into proven platforms that offer governance and automation at scale.”