# Shadow AI in the workplace: what's the 2026 state of play? > In 2026, the ungoverned use of generative AI at work is no longer marginal. Two-thirds of office professionals who use AI for work have done so with a tool they believed was not permitted, and 88% have shared work information with a public AI tool: emails, meeting notes, customer data. 66% of office professionals who use AI for work have done so with a tool they believed was **not permitted.** PagerDuty / Wakefield Research · 1,250 non-IT office professionals · April 2026 *Key figures of the 2026 Shadow AI Barometer. Infographic free to reuse (CC BY 4.0).* ## Method and sources This dossier is not a survey. It is a synthesis of public data, cross-checked, dated and free to reuse. We bring together the figures published between July 2025 and September 2026 by primary sources: the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, PagerDuty with Wakefield Research, Greenworking with Ipsos bva, Netskope Threat Labs and IBM with the Ponemon Institute. Every figure links to its source, with its date and its scope, in the list at the bottom of the page. These surveys do not share the same method or the same scope. Do not add them up. Our findings align with the reference barometers on the subject. - **CESIN and OpinionWay**, 11th barometer of cybersecurity in French companies, 397 security leaders, January 2026. Employees using unapproved AI tools becomes the top risk behaviour identified by CISOs. - **ESSCA and Forvis Mazars**, 2nd AI, Business and Sustainability Barometer, 826 respondents across Europe, published on October 1, 2026. Two-thirds of organisations observe ungoverned AI use, and only 44% have formalised ethical rules. - **EQS Group**, Privacy Barometer 2026, 206 professionals, with Grant Thornton and the AFJE, February 12, 2026. 80% of French organisations have no clear view of AI-related risks. The WYP grid The maturity grid below is a positioning tool, not a survey. It places your organisation on four levels, from denial to governance. It does not measure a population and produces no statistic. Edition 2.0, October 2, 2026. Figures free to reuse with attribution, under a CC BY 4.0 licence. ## 01 The state of play Adoption is not decided in a committee. It rises from the ground up, faster than any IT department can frame it. 45.2% of employed US adults aged 18 to 64 use generative AI for their job (37.4% in August 2025) St. Louis Fed · FRED series · Q2 2026 73% of French private-sector employees use AI at work (up 10 points in a year), 55% regularly or daily Greenworking × Ipsos bva · May 2026 89% of office professionals who use AI for work first adopted it in their personal life PagerDuty · Apr. 2026 79% of them now use it more often at work than outside work PagerDuty · Apr. 2026 WYP reading Use does not come down from management. It settles in from below, carried by free tools that are useful from the first minute. **A ban does not catch up with a free tool.** ## 02 What actually leaks The risk is concrete. **88% of respondents have shared work-related information with a public AI tool** (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, outside company systems). Here is what they entered: Emails and correspondence 43% Meeting notes or summaries 40% Customer data 34% Financial information 31% Confidential documents or strategies 31% Code or technical specs 23% PagerDuty Shadow AI Survey, Wakefield Research, fieldwork April 9 to 20, 2026, published June 11, 2026. Margin of error ±2.8 points for the total sample. Another signal: **38% have shared AI-assisted work without disclosing it**, and 39% would rather use AI without telling anyone than risk being told they cannot. WYP reading Every line is data leaving the company for a third-party service, often **with no contract and no legal review.** As soon as personal data is involved, it is a GDPR processing operation for which the company remains responsible. ## 03 Why it happens Shadow AI is rarely an individual fault. Four mechanisms make it predictable. 1 ### It is free A personal account and an email address are enough. No barrier to entry. 2 ### Perceived performance Public models help right away. 89% of users started in their personal life, convinced before any framework existed. 3 ### Slow official rollout Months go by between the need and the approved tool. 44% use AI to work around the limits of company-approved tools. 4 ### A vague policy, or one seen as unequal Without a written rule, silence passes for permission. Even where a policy exists (86% of respondents believe so), 81% think leadership plays by different rules from the rest of the company. In France, the Greenworking × Ipsos bva Observatory (May 2026) confirms it: **only 37% of users systematically use tools approved by their company.** Conversely, where an official tool exists, personal use declines. Netskope network data for its European customers, March 2025 to March 2026: 43% of AI users go through personal accounts, down from 79% a year earlier; company-managed accounts rose from 28% to 72% Netskope Threat Labs · Europe · May 2026 59% of data policy violations involving AI and personal apps concern regulated data Netskope Threat Labs · Europe · May 2026 WYP reading Banning without an alternative pushes use into the shadows: **the risk stays, visibility disappears.** A good official tool, on the other hand, makes shadow AI recede. ## 04 What it costs, what it commits The cost of an incident and the company's liability are now documented. 1 in 5 breached organizations reported a breach due to shadow AI; high levels of shadow AI were associated with $670,000 in higher breach costs IBM / Ponemon · Cost of a Data Breach · July 2025 63% of breached organizations either have no AI governance policy or are still developing one IBM / Ponemon · Cost of a Data Breach · July 2025 **The Air Canada precedent.** On February 14, 2024, a Canadian tribunal ordered the airline to compensate a customer misinformed by its website chatbot about bereavement fares: CA$650.88 in damages, CA$812.02 including interest and fees. Air Canada argued that the chatbot was a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions. The tribunal called this a "remarkable submission" and rejected it. Case law · 2024 "It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website." Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149, para. 27, Civil Resolution Tribunal (British Columbia), February 14, 2024 WYP reading A company answers for what the AI it lets people use produces. **An error built into a service or a deliverable commits the employer, not the model.** ## 05 The WYP grid: where does your organisation stand? Locate your maturity at a glance. Levels 0 and 1 are **exposed.** 0 ### Denial No policy, no measure. Use exists and stays invisible. *Maximum exposure.* Exposed 1 ### Ban Restrictive policy with no tool and no support. Use continues, hidden. *The risk stays, visibility disappears.* Exposed 2 ### Framing Written policy, approved and properly hosted tool, team training. Use is framed. *Risk under control.* Controlled 3 ### Governance Framing, regular audit of use, human review of high-stakes outputs, continuous improvement. *Shadow AI becomes plain AI again.* Controlled WYP.agency analysis grid. It is not based on a survey: it is a positioning tool. ## 06 The three non-negotiable measures ### A written AI policy One page is enough: approved tools, data never to be entered, outputs that need review. Without a written rule, silence means permission. ### An approved, properly hosted tool Offer a credible alternative: enterprise contract, data not reused for training, hosting suited to your constraints. Personal use recedes when the official tool is just as good. ### Human review of high-stakes outputs No client, legal or financial deliverable goes out without review. Generative models sometimes produce plausible errors: it is a known limit, to be built into the process. Train before you sanction. Discovering shadow AI should first trigger information and training, except in cases of serious breach of confidentiality. **Citation and reuse.** Edition 2.0, October 2, 2026. The surveys cited differ in method and scope: do not add them up. Data reusable under a [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) licence, with attribution: "Shadow AI Barometer 2026", WYP.agency, [https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/shadow-ai-barometer-2026/](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/shadow-ai-barometer-2026/) ## See also - [Shadow AI](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/shadow-ai/) - [Hallucination](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/hallucination/) - [Guardrails](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/guardrails/) - [GDPR and AI](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/gdpr-ai/) - [Usage discipline](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/usage-discipline/) - [Auditing AI maturity](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/ai-maturity-audit/) - [Bringing shadow AI under control](https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/shadow-ai-framing-guide/) ## Sources - PagerDuty, press release "PagerDuty Report Finds Two-Thirds (66%) of Office Professionals Have Used Unauthorized AI Tools at Work", June 11, 2026 (https://www.pagerduty.com/newsroom/shadow-ai-workplace-survey-2026/) - PagerDuty Shadow AI Survey, full report, Wakefield Research, fieldwork April 9 to 20, 2026 (1,250 non-IT office professionals, companies with $500M+ revenue, US, UK, Australia, Japan; margin of error ±2.8 points) (https://cdn.pagerduty.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FINAL-PagerDuty-Shadow-AI-Report-June-11-2026-1.pdf) - Generative Artificial Intelligence, Adoption Rate for Work: Employed Adults (series RPSGENAIUSAGESHAREWORK, Real-Time Population Survey, workers aged 18 to 64), FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Q2 2026 value released August 4, 2026 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPSGENAIUSAGESHAREWORK) - Bick, Blandin and Deming, "The State of Generative AI Adoption in 2025", Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, November 13, 2025 (https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/nov/state-generative-ai-adoption-2025) - Greenworking × Ipsos bva, "IA au travail : derrière l'adoption massive, des usages fantômes et des managers en première ligne", September 23, 2026 (fieldwork May 12 to 25, 2026, 1,100 French private-sector employees excluding manual workers, including 474 managers; in French) (https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/ia-au-travail-derriere-ladoption-massive-des-usages-fantomes-et-des-managers-en-premiere-ligne) - Netskope Threat Labs Report: Europe 2026, May 25, 2026 (data from March 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026) (https://www.netskope.com/resources/threat-labs-reports/threat-labs-report-europe-2026) - IBM, "IBM Report: 13% Of Organizations Reported Breaches Of AI Models Or Applications, 97% Of Which Reported Lacking Proper AI Access Controls", Cost of a Data Breach 2025 (Ponemon Institute, 600 organizations), July 30, 2025 (https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-07-30-ibm-report-13-of-organizations-reported-breaches-of-ai-models-or-applications,-97-of-which-reported-lacking-proper-ai-access-controls) - Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149, Civil Resolution Tribunal (British Columbia), February 14, 2024 (https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bccrt/doc/2024/2024bccrt149/2024bccrt149.html) - CNIL (French data protection authority), "Intelligence artificielle" topic page (in French) (https://www.cnil.fr/fr/intelligence-artificielle) - CESIN and OpinionWay, 11th annual barometer of cybersecurity in French companies, 397 cybersecurity leaders and CISOs, online survey from December 2025 to January 2026 (https://www.opinion-way.com/fr/publications/barometre-de-la-cybersecurite-des-entreprises-francaises-2026-22229/) - ESSCA and Forvis Mazars, 2nd AI, Business and Sustainability Barometer, 826 respondents (IT and digital professionals in France, the UK, Germany, Spain), published October 1, 2026 (https://www.essca-knowledge.fr/en/all-posts/ai-sustainability/ai-barometer-2026-companies-sustainability-europe/) - EQS Group, Privacy Barometer 2026 (7th edition), 206 professionals, with Grant Thornton and the AFJE, published February 12, 2026 (https://www.eqs.com/fr/ressources-compliance/livres-blancs/barometre-privacy-2026/) --- Entry from the WYP.agency AI glossary · https://wyp.agency/en/glossary/shadow-ai-barometer-2026/ · Last updated : 2026-10-16