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Claim check

“75% of knowledge workers use AI, and 78% bring their own tools (Microsoft)”

The claim matches the 2024 Work Trend Index by Microsoft, which sells AI tools for work, and LinkedIn, which Microsoft owns. The 75%, the 78% and its base, AI users, are as the report gives them. They are what 31,000 desk workers in 31 countries said in an online survey in February and March 2024. Each country counts equally in the 75%: the US figure was 71%, Japan’s 32%. Retellings go further than the report: they date the figures “now”, apply the 78% to all employees, and turn tools “not provided” by the employer into tools it “never approved”.

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Verdict Confirmed

The primary source says what the claim says.

Kind of figure Self-reported

What people said in a survey or interview, not measured.

Holds for Desk workers in 31 countries who answered an online survey in February and March 2024, with each country counted equally. The 78% is a share of those who said they use generative AI, and counts tools the employer did not provide, not tools it banned.

The claim

Three in four knowledge workers (75%) use AI at work, and 78% of them bring their own AI tools, according to Microsoft and LinkedIn’s Work Trend Index.

How the claim travelled

Each step is a publication that passed the claim on, oldest first, with its exact words and what changed.

  1. Research

    Microsoft and LinkedIn, Work Trend Index · archived copy

    “Use of generative AI has nearly doubled in the last six months, with 75% of global knowledge workers using it. … 78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work (BYOAI)—it’s even more common at small and medium-sized companies (80%).”

    What changed: Origin. Edelman Data & Intelligence surveyed 31,000 desk workers online, 1,000 in each of 31 countries, in February and March 2024, and pooled the answers. The 78% counts AI users whose tools were “not provided by their organization”. “Nearly doubled” comes from how long users said they had used AI.

  2. Press

    Fortune (Sheryl Estrada) · archived copy

    “Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index, released on Wednesday in partnership with LinkedIn, finds that, in the last six months, the use of generative AI has nearly doubled, with 75% of global knowledge workers using it. (Knowledge workers are considered professionals in roles like public accountants, engineers, editors, and lawyers.) In addition, 78% of AI users are actually bringing their own AI tools to the workplace, which is coined “BYOAI.””

    What changed: The headline reads “Employees are secretly bringing their own AI tools to work”. The report itself framed the 78% as “keeping AI use under wraps”, but its question asked only who provided the tools. A definition of knowledge workers is added (“accountants, engineers, editors, and lawyers”) that is not in the report, which defines them as people who work at a desk.

  3. Press release

    WalkMe · archived copy

    “Nearly 80% of employees admit to using unapproved AI tools, exposing businesses to risk and wasted ROI”

    What changed: A second 78%, from a different survey. WalkMe, which sells software that guides staff through workplace tools, asked 1,000 US workers who already use AI. In its own body text, 78% said they use AI tools “not provided by their employer”. The headline turns that into “employees” using “unapproved” tools.

  4. Press

    VKTR (David Gordon) · archived copy

    “According to Microsoft and LinkedIn’s 2024 Work Trend Index, 75% of knowledge workers now use generative AI at work, and 78% are using self-selected tools, commonly dubbed Bring Your Own AI (BYOAI) without organizational guidance.”

    What changed: “Of AI users” is dropped, so the 78% reads as a share of all knowledge workers. Data from early 2024 are “now” in late 2025. “Without organizational guidance” echoes the report’s own “without guidance or clearance from the top”; the survey question did not ask about guidance. The article presents it as “shadow AI”.

  5. Vendor

    Strategic Micro Systems · archived copy

    “About 78% of employees use AI tools their employer has never approved.”

    What changed: Dead end. No source is named; the page says only that the figure “comes from cross-industry usage research”. AI users become “employees”, and tools “not provided” become tools “never approved”. It could come from Microsoft’s survey or from WalkMe’s. The IT services firm’s article goes on to discuss a Microsoft product for finding unapproved AI.

What the primary source says

The figures come from the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, published by Microsoft and LinkedIn on 8 May 2024. Microsoft owns LinkedIn and sells Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI assistant for work, to employers. The report argues that companies should provide AI to their staff, because employees who bring their own tools put “company data at risk”.

How it was done. Edelman Data & Intelligence, a research firm, ran a 20-minute online survey between 15 February and 28 March 2024. It asked 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed “knowledge workers”, 1,000 in each of 31 countries. The report defines knowledge workers as “those who typically work at a desk (whether in an office or at home)”. It says “global results have been aggregated across all responses to provide an average”, so each country counts equally, whatever the size of its workforce. The report does not say how people were recruited or whether answers were weighted within each country.

Where the 75% appears. The introduction says: “Use of generative AI has nearly doubled in the last six months, with 75% of global knowledge workers using it.” The question was “How often do you use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for your work?” The report does not show the answer options, so it is not clear how often someone had to use it to count. “Nearly doubled” was not measured twice. It comes from the 46% of users who said they had started less than six months earlier.

Where the 78% appears. “78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work (BYOAI)—it’s even more common at small and medium-sized companies (80%).” The question was “Are the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools you use at work provided by your organization?” Only people who said they used generative AI at work were asked.

How much the countries differ. The appendix gives the 75% by country: 92% in India, 91% in China, 71% in the United States, 69% in the United Kingdom and Germany, 56% in France and 32% in Japan. The 78% ranges from 63% in the United States to 88% in the Netherlands.

What the claim gets right

  • The numbers, the base and the source match the report. The report says “75% of global knowledge workers” use generative AI and “78% of AI users are bringing their own AI tools to work”. The claim keeps “78% of them”, so the 78% stays a share of AI users. The limits below are what the claim leaves for you to state.
  • It is what people said, not a count of use. The figures are answers to an online survey for a company that sells AI tools for work. Name the sponsor when you cite them.
  • It is an average of 31 countries, each counted equally. It describes the people who answered, not knowledge workers in any one place. The US figure was 71%, Europe’s 65%, Japan’s 32%.
  • The 78% is a share of AI users, not of all workers. The claim keeps this base. Retellings write “78% of employees”, or drop the base altogether. As a share of everyone surveyed, it is roughly three in five (78% of 75%).
  • “Bring their own” means the employer did not provide the tools, not that it banned them. The survey asked whether the employer provided the tools. It did not ask whether the employer allowed or banned them. A tool the employer did not provide may still be one it allows. The report itself introduced the figure with “Without guidance or clearance from the top”, which retellings turn into “unapproved”.
  • The figures are from early 2024. Articles in 2025 and 2026 still say “now”.
  • A different 78% now travels with it. In 2025 WalkMe, which sells software that guides staff through workplace tools, reported that 78% of 1,000 US workers who use AI used tools “not provided by their employer”. Unsourced articles that say “78% of employees” may be quoting either survey.

What other sources found

Surveys that sample the whole workforce at random, or weight their answers to it, find far lower use. In the United States, the economists Bick, Blandin and Deming asked more than 10,000 adults aged 18 to 64 in August and November 2024. Their online survey was built and weighted to match the US population. They found that “26.5 percent of workers used genAI at work: 9.0 percent used it every work day and 13.9 percent on some but not all workdays”. Pew Research Center, a non-profit, asked 5,273 US workers on a panel recruited at random in October 2024. “About one-in-six workers (16%) say at least some of their work is currently done with AI”. These surveys cover all workers, not only desk workers, so they are lower partly for that reason.

In Denmark, Humlum and Vestergaard surveyed about 25,000 workers in 11 occupations where chatbots are useful, such as accountants and customer support staff, and linked the answers to official records. The authors estimate that, for a typical worker, “47% of workers have used AI chatbots for work” where the employer did not encourage them, and 83% where it did. That counts anyone who had ever used one.

This check found no survey without a vendor behind it that asked whether workers’ AI tools were provided by their employer. WalkMe’s 78% matches Microsoft’s, but it comes from another company that sells workplace software.

The Work Trend Index can be cited for what desk workers in 31 countries said in early 2024, country by country, with Microsoft named as the sponsor. It is not a measure of how many workers use AI, or of how many use tools their employer banned.

What to cite instead

In an online survey of 31,000 desk workers in 31 countries, run in February and March 2024 for Microsoft, which sells AI tools for work, and LinkedIn, 75% said they used generative AI at work (71% in the United States). Of those users, 78% said they used AI tools their employer did not provide. A survey weighted to the whole US workforce found that 26.5% of US workers used generative AI at work in late 2024.

When the claim comes up

The source supports “75% of knowledge workers use AI, and 78% bring their own tools (Microsoft)”. Cite it with the wording under “What to cite instead”, which names the source and its date.

If someone quotes it without a source, add the source. You could say:

That holds: both figures are from Microsoft and LinkedIn’s Work Trend Index of May 2024. They are what 31,000 desk workers in 31 countries said in an online survey in early 2024, for a company that sells AI tools for work. The 78% is of AI users only, and counts tools the employer did not provide, not tools it banned.

Sources

  1. Microsoft and LinkedIn (8 May 2024). 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report: AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part. Report; survey by Edelman Data & Intelligence. PDF revised June 2024. assets-c4akfrf5b4d3f4b7.z01.azurefd.net
  2. Microsoft and LinkedIn (8 May 2024). AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part. Web version of the report. microsoft.com
  3. Spataro (8 May 2024). Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work. Official Microsoft Blog. Microsoft’s own summary. blogs.microsoft.com
  4. Estrada (10 May 2024). Employees are secretly bringing their own AI tools to work so they can keep up. Fortune. fortune.com
  5. WalkMe (27 August 2025). Employees Left Behind in Workplace AI Boom, New WalkMe Survey Finds. Press release; survey by Propeller Insights. walkme.com
  6. Gordon (19 September 2025). The Rise of Shadow AI and What Leaders Should Do About It. VKTR. vktr.com
  7. Strategic Micro Systems (1 May 2026). Shadow AI Risks: What Your Business Needs to Know. Blog. stmicro.net
  8. Bick, Blandin and Deming (September 2024, revised February 2025). The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI. NBER Working Paper 32966. nber.org
  9. Pew Research Center (25 February 2025). U.S. Workers Are More Worried Than Hopeful About Future AI Use in the Workplace. pewresearch.org
  10. Humlum and Vestergaard (May 2025). Large Language Models, Small Labor Market Effects. Becker Friedman Institute Working Paper 2025-56. bfi.uchicago.edu
  11. Humlum and Vestergaard (2025). Still Waters, Rapid Currents: Early Labor Market Transformation under Generative AI. NBER Working Paper 33777 (revised March 2026). What this study did and found