Companies are rushing into generative AI without a cohesive, secure strategy

Despite mass adoption of generative AI, most companies don’t have a coordinated strategy for deploying it or know how to assess its security—exposing them to risks and disadvantages if they don’t change their approach, according to Grammarly.

Businesses are rushing to deploy generative AI to drive transformation. The study finds organizations are turning to the technology to address challenges like improving writing quality (47%), increasing revenue (46%), and speeding up execution (42%)—and 43% are moving more quickly than in the past with other innovations.

Businesses lag in generative AI adoption

Still, companies lag behind employees on adoption, and only 45% have an enterprise-wide strategy to ensure secure, aligned deployment across the entire organization. That leaves them vulnerable to security threats and technical consolidation challenges from disjointed and ungoverned use of generative AI—putting their business, customers, and employees at risk and jeopardizing their ability to realize the technology’s benefits down the line.

“If you’re a business leader, adopting generative AI is not optional—your teams and competitors already are,” said Matt Rosenberg, Grammarly’s CRO and Head of Grammarly Business. “Those who fail to recognize or underestimate the value of the technology will fall behind, but businesses need to know how to operationalize it at scale. Carefully executing a company-wide strategy with holistic solutions is essential to achieve transformation through generative AI—and avoid long-term risks.”

The study of 301 technology decision-makers in North America and the UK underscores that businesses deploying the technology early and with a wall-to-wall strategy will gain a competitive edge. Additional findings include:

• Generative AI is a critical or important priority for 89% of respondents’ companies, and by 2025, nearly all (97%) will be using the technology to support communication.
• 74% of respondents using generative AI say it’s already improving their ability to increase revenue, and the average daily time savings from generative AI is 33%—the equivalent of 2.5 hours every workday or 13 hours each workweek.
• Companies’ top concern with not using generative AI is falling behind competitors (35%)—but hurdles like security concerns (32%), lack of a cohesive AI strategy (30%), and lack of internal policies to govern generative AI (27%) prevent adoption.

Rampant ungoverned use of generative AI

The findings reinforce that generative AI will change how work gets done: 62% of respondents expect it to transform workflows across their entire company within a year.

And it’s not just saving time and increasing revenue—those who’ve adopted the technology say it’s already having a transformational or large impact on their ability to increase customer satisfaction (77%), enhance the employee experience (79%), reduce operational costs (75%), and improve privacy compliance (77%) and data security (73%).

While companies are moving fast on deployment, employees are moving faster: 39% of respondents are already using generative AI for all of their writing and editing at work, but 80% of those say their company hasn’t yet adopted generative AI.

Most sales, marketing, HR, and customer support leaders consider generative AI a “critical” priority, and 72% report different departments are leveraging it on their own without an organization-wide strategy.

The study suggests a pressing need to build better privacy and security practices and literacy around generative AI. Respondents cited enterprise data security as both the most critical criterion in their investments and the top technical challenge to adoption. Yet, 64% of respondents’ companies don’t know how to evaluate the security of potential generative AI partners.

Especially with how quickly employees are moving, companies cannot afford to wait on adopting a comprehensive approach to generative AI if they want to avoid falling behind. Respondents say their companies need a solution that can be used across their organization (90%) and that understands the context of many different scenarios (89%).

Companies with holistic strategies are 1.4 times more likely to be accelerating generative AI adoption than those using it at the departmental level. They’re also 1.5 times more likely to say they’re deploying faster than competitors.