ABBYY Survey Reveals Disillusionment with Generative AI in the UK
Challenges Sparked by BYOS are Causing Shadow IT Risks
New results from ABBYY’s State of Intelligent Automation: GenAI Disillusionment survey reveals challenges in implementing Generative AI (GenAI) for senior managers and above in medium and large businesses – prompting the use of other AI to improve outputs.
The survey by Opinium Research, commissioned by ABBYY, shows that nearly a third (32%) of UK leaders said their staff did not have the skills to deploy GenAI. Meanwhile, 30% say training GenAI models was harder than expected, and a quarter (25%) said it was difficult to integrate into their business processes. Worryingly, a fifth (20%) said staff misuse the tools.
To address these challenges UK leaders are introducing other technologies, with 45% using AI agents, 42% turning to process intelligence, 38% using Document AI, and a quarter (25%) introducing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to improve outputs.
Adding these technologies were contributing factors to 99% of UK respondents ultimately being happy with their GenAI tools – with those who used the technology seeing better consistency of outputs (56%), greater cost efficiency and savings (50%), and more accurate results (48%).
Businesses are spending money on GenAI tools that promise more than they can provide. In some cases they don’t even need it. Before moving forward with leveraging GenAI tools for agentic AI, companies need to first evaluate their current processes and create a visibility map of their workflow with data analytics tools such as process intelligence. We’ve helped customers like a global fast-food chain improve the extraction of data from thousands of lease agreements by 82% by using document AI to improve GenAI outputs. When training models prove more difficult than expected, pre-trained, purpose-built AI turns out to be the right solution.
Maxime Vermeir, Senior Director of AI at ABBYY
The survey also revealed that businesses are experiencing “Shadow AI”, with four in ten (39%) UK respondents admitting that a driving factor for implementation was employees already using it on a Bring Your Own Software (BYOS) basis.
Employees are generally optimistic about GenAI, with leaders reporting that 91% hold a positive view of the technology. More than half (54%) say staff use it to “make them look smarter and more professional”, while 61% say it helps reduce workload and supports creativity.
Given a wish list of improvements to GenAI, 38% of UK workers wanted GenAI to save time through manually processing information from documents - higher than the US at 20%, Australia at 29% and Germany at 24%.
Shadow AI and BYOS are the problem of the year, with employees already using tools like ChatGPT, Grok, or Perplexity for their work without safeguards in place. This puts data security at risk. Business leaders need to be clear about what they want to achieve and how they integrate GenAI within their business workflows and product development.
Ulf Persson, CEO at ABBYY
In terms of investment, A quarter (24%) of UK respondents said they have spent more than £1m on AI in the last year, with the average spend in the UK being £840.4K. As for next year, the average budget is expected to increase 22%, while 9% of respondents will raise budgets by over 50%.
Access the full State of Intelligent Automation: GenAI Disillusionment and AI Wishlist report at https://www.abbyy.com/resources/report/state-of-intelligent-automation-genai-2025/ for more information.
Methodology
Opinium research of 1,200 senior managers or above in companies of 100+ employees in the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia and Singapore. Research undertaken between 20th of June and 8th of July 2025.
This press announcement is a global summarization of the survey results. Please use the links below for country-specific announcements:
About ABBYY
ABBYY helps organizations optimize processes, accelerate decisions, and drive better outcomes with Process AI and Document AI. More than 10,000 enterprises, including many Fortune 500 companies, rely on ABBYY’s 35 years of innovation to turn business data into actionable insights that improve the way we work and live. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, and offices in 13 countries, ABBYY leads the way for smarter agentic automation. For more information, visit www.abbyy.com/company and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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