26% of US workers used paid AI services for work last week

Roughly one in four American workers paid for artificial intelligence last week and then put it to work. A poll found that 26% of US workers used a paid AI service for their jobs in the past week.

Who is paying, and who is working

The paid-usage figure arrives alongside a broader March 2026 survey from Epoch AI, conducted with Ipsos. That survey polled more than 2,000 employed US adults.

Half of them, 50%, said they had used AI tools in the past week. That count covers both work and personal use.

Among those users, half said their work usage was at least equal to their personal usage.

The more telling split is about who pays the bill. Among workers using AI through a subscription their employer provides, 76% were using it for work tasks.

For people paying for a subscription out of their own pocket, work-oriented usage came in at 58%. Free-tier users trailed well behind, at 38%.

The survey also asked what AI was actually doing for these workers. Among work-oriented users, 27% said the tools had replaced tasks they used to do.

Another 21% said AI let them take on new kinds of work. Generative AI products such as ChatGPT and Copilot are part of that shift.

How this squares with other surveys

Gallup has been tracking workplace AI use through late 2025 and into 2026. Gallup found that frequent workplace use, defined as a few times per week or more, reached about 26% in late 2025.

Daily workplace use in Gallup’s tracking sat around 12%, with readings ranging from 10% to 12%. Usage at least a few times a year hit somewhere between 45% and 52%.

Estimates of generative AI use at work range from 21% to 45% through 2026, depending on how surveys word their questions and when they run.

What this means

For employers, the findings carry a quieter implication. If 58% of self-paying subscribers are using AI for work, some employees are effectively subsidizing their company’s productivity with their own money.

For workers, the task-replacement data deserves attention. Some 27% of work-oriented users said AI replaced existing tasks, while 21% said it opened up new types of work.

The gap between occasional and daily use is the metric to watch from here. Gallup’s daily figure of around 12% is far below the roughly half of workers who use AI at least a few times a year.