- 75% of UK business travelers would use or have used unapproved AI tools
- Many are not satisfied with the tools provided to them, some do not even receive any.
- Workers don’t want to use other tools – they just want AI integrated
New data from SAP Concur has seemingly confirmed that employees are still ignoring company policies, with three in four UK business travelers using (or reportedly using) unapproved AI tools.
Data from the company’s Global Business Travel Survey shows that while organizations are investing heavily in AI, they are not giving workers access to the right tools.
As a result, employees choose to use other, more suitable alternatives and often prefer publicly available chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
Shadow AI is an even bigger problem among traveling workers
Two in five (43%) say they use unapproved tools because they prefer different options than what’s available to them, but a third (32%) say their organization doesn’t even offer AI tools to help plan or book travel, forcing them to look elsewhere.
Data shows that remote workers (81%) are more likely to use shadow AI than office workers (71%), as are younger workers like Gen Z (79%) and Millennials (76%), compared to Gen X (62%) and Baby Boomers (49%).
As for what employees are looking for in AI to support their travel needs, the most important use case is route planning (37%). Tracking expenses (30%), assessing travel risks (26%), changing their trip (24%), and writing expense reports (21%) are also common use cases for productivity-enhancing technology.
But business leaders already know the scale of the problem: 100% of CFOs are concerned about ghost AI in business travel, according to the report.
“Leaders must educate workers about the risks and provide travel and travel tools that provide the desired level of AI support,” noted Paul Dear, vice president EMEA of Concur Travel.
For the future, the solution must come from organizations: employees are clearly not very inclined to have to navigate to third-party tools and do it out of necessity. More than a third actually want their AI tools to be integrated into their productivity software (38%), their communications platforms (36%) and their CRM systems (32%).
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