But organizations warned of privacy risk - nearly 31% of apps declare they train on customer data and less than 1% have a trust center

Harmonic Security has today published the first of its kind study into workplace GenAI use. This analysis is based on Harmonic’s own random sample of 1,000 enterprise employees which have used at least one GenAI app in the last month.

The study, titled GenAI Unleashed finds that on average GenAI users upload data to 8.25 apps every month. On each end of the scale, some 18.9% of ‘power users’ use more than 12 whereas 10% only use one. Overall, the number of apps being used is down 11% from June – indicating that employees might be refining their use cases and the apps they deem useful.

‘Content creation, summarizing, or editing’ has emerged as the overwhelming business case with some 47% of analyzed prompts asking apps for help in this area. The next most popular is software engineering with 15% of the share. Others featuring strongly include data interpretation, processing, and analysis (12%), business and finance (7%) and problem solving and troubleshooting (6%).

The study found that 5,020 GenAI or GenAI-enabled tools are in use. Of these the most popular by far is ChatGPT which is used by 84% of users and is 6X more popular than Google Gemini which is the next nearest app in terms of popularity used by 14%. Others featuring strongly include Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude. In terms of business case, 25% of apps help with content including editing, creation, summarization, and translation, 18% are business tools such as Slack, Notion and Grammarly, while 13% provide customer service help such as streamlining support.

However, there are potential privacy and security risks with how employees currently use GenAI apps. The study found that 30.8% of all the 5020 applications studied declare they train on customer data, which means that any sensitive data uploaded can be used to train their models. Furthermore, less than 1% have a ‘Trust Center’ - where it is possible to see at a glance crucial security and privacy settings.

Alastair Paterson, co-founder and CEO of Harmonic Security explains: “The study finds that once employees start using GenAI they tend to go ‘all in’ with a high number of apps being used each month. We can probably expect this to fall as the market settles and employees settle on the most useful app for them. However with a choice of over 5,000 GenAI apps and a high number of average apps used by employees there are too many out there for IT departments to properly keep track of using existing tools. We particularly urge organizations to pay attention to apps that are training on customer data.”

About Harmonic

Harmonic Security gives security teams the tools to protect sensitive data without the headaches of labeling and complex rules. Our pre-trained data protection models enable secure innovation through user education and gentle nudges.

Recognized as an RSA Innovation Sandbox finalist in 2024, Harmonic Security redefines data protection for the GenAI era.

For more information, visit https://www.harmonic.security/

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