IAB Establishment Panel: Adoption Without Guardrails

One in four German businesses now uses generative AI. Sounds like a success story. Until you read the second set of numbers in the same study.

The IAB Establishment Panel asked about generative AI for the first time in 2025. Two years ago, the share was just 5 percent — a fivefold increase in 24 months. Among large businesses with more than 200 employees, the figure is 48 percent, with another 19 percent planning to adopt. Even firms with fewer than ten employees reach 21 percent.

But how is the technology actually used? 90 percent of using businesses rely on freely accessible models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. In practice, that often means: a browser tab, company data in, results out. 56 percent of these businesses have no internal rules in place and aren't planning any. Training looks much the same.

The study's authors call this active support for implementation. Read more soberly: in the majority of using businesses, AI is running today without guardrails.

My read: an AI strategy in 2026 starts with a stocktake of what's already been running productively in-house for months — and with putting the safeguards in place after the fact. Many companies are still debating whether they need AI. The departments below have long since answered the question.

Source: IAB Brief Report 8/2026 (Friedrich & Kagerl): https://doku.iab.de/kurzber/2026/kb2026-08.pdf