You used AI at work. Does your boss know?

You use a chatbot to get through the rough draft. The work is done sooner. Then comes the awkward question: do you tell your manager?

A new survey puts a number on that quiet tension. Deloitte UK surveyed 25,000 working adults, ages 18 to 70, in May and June 2026. Nearly two-thirds said they knowingly used generative AI for work. Among those AI users, 31% said they used it without their employer knowing.

The fear goes beyond getting caught breaking a rule. Nearly a quarter of respondents thought there was a stigma around using AI at work. And 64% of weekly AI users worried their manager might think AI could do their job. The same survey says those workers estimated they saved about 70 minutes a week on average; most of that time, they said, went to doing more work for the same employer.

That makes for an uncomfortable loop: hide the shortcut, deliver faster, then wonder whether the speed makes your own role look easier to replace. The survey cannot prove that AI use causes job loss or stigma. It records what UK workers said about their own use and fears, and “employer doesn’t know” does not necessarily mean the tool was forbidden.

If this is your workplace too, check the policy before pasting work into a personal AI account. Don’t enter confidential, customer or personal data unless your organization has approved that tool and use. Verify the output, and describe honestly what the tool did when your workplace asks. The valuable part is still the judgment you bring to the answer.

The tension is real: people can save time with AI and still worry that admitting it will change how their work is valued.

The survey was an online quota sample weighted to UK population benchmarks; it is self-reported and represents the UK, not all countries or workplaces.

Sources: Deloitte UK GenAI Workforce Survey, 2026; Deloitte UK, What We Do in the AI Shadows.