Nearly half of adults would hide AI use in their work, even though most say others should not

Nearly half of adults surveyed would publish AI-generated work without disclosing it, even though a majority believe others should do exactly that. The contradiction sits at the centre of a new survey from Use.AI, an AI aggregation platform that polled 7,200 adults across the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Latin America. The results, published on July 30, suggest that attitudes toward AI authorship are splitting faster than workplace norms can keep up.

Forty-six percent of respondents said they would not reveal that AI played a role in work presented under their own name. Yet 54 percent said other people should disclose when they use AI for equivalent tasks. The gap between what people expect of others and what they practise themselves mirrors a pattern researchers have been documenting for months.

The survey also explored when people feel entitled to call AI output their own. Sixty-nine percent said the work belongs to them if they supplied the instructions and approved the final version, while 74 percent felt the same after revising AI-generated material. Seventy-one percent said taking responsibility for accuracy was enough to claim authorship.

Use.AI sells a platform that aggregates multiple AI models into a single interface, which means the company has a commercial interest in normalising AI use. Its Managing Director, Ihor Herasymov, framed the findings as evidence that people already see themselves as authors when they guide AI, but the survey’s methodology, including its sampling method and margin of error, was not disclosed in the accompanying press release. That gap makes it difficult to assess how representative the results truly are.

Other research points in the same direction. Atlassian found that workers who disclose AI use are judged ten times lazier by colleagues, a finding that helps explain why many choose to stay quiet. A Harvard Business Review analysis published in June concluded that employees hide AI usage largely because they fear professional consequences, not because they lack awareness of disclosure norms.

A separate ResumeBuilder survey found that nearly 63 percent of workers have never told their managers that AI was doing part of their job. Half of Gen Z workers report feeling guilty about using AI, even as employers increasingly rank AI skills above a university degree. The disconnect between private behaviour and public expectation is consistent across age groups and geographies.

The timing is notable. The European Union’s AI Act transparency rules took effect on August 2, requiring companies to label AI-generated content that could pass for authentic, with fines reaching three percent of global turnover for non-compliance. The regulation targets deepfakes and synthetic media rather than workplace documents, but it signals a broader regulatory push toward mandatory disclosure that may eventually reach professional settings.

For now, the gap between belief and behaviour remains wide. People overwhelmingly think AI use should be disclosed, just not by them, and workplaces have yet to produce rules clear enough to close the distance.