Two of PwC’s latest surveys reveal interesting insights about the state of work, artificial intelligence, employee sentiment, investments, opportunities and more.
Data within the “Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025: Rewiring the future of work” and the “29th Global CEO Survey: Leading through uncertainty in the age of AI” suggest that while those using generative AI daily at work do experience productivity gains, most people still aren’t using the technology, even though they’re curious or even excited about it. And further, while approximately one-third of CEOs say they’ve seen increased revenue from AI over the last year, a majority have yet to realize any such benefits.
It seems as though we’re in the middle of an AI twilight period, where both uncertainty and curiosity are widespread — nearly in equal measure — and only pockets of responsible adoption are translating into measurable results despite data suggesting that a healthy ROI is possible with stronger foundations and more extensive integration.
Here is a selection of compelling findings from each survey, including what they might indicate for marketers and brands throughout 2026.
Subscribe to the ai marketer
Weekly updates on all things ai in marketing.
Key Insights From Each Report
Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025: Rewiring the Future of Work
PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025 paints a picture of a workforce that’s increasingly aware of AI but not necessarily using it consistently or confidently.
Across industries, more than half of workers (54%) report having used AI in the last 12 months. But when we zoom in, it’s more nuanced. Only 32% of employees say they use GenAI tools daily or weekly at work, while 67% report using GenAI infrequently or not at all. Adoption drops even further when it comes to autonomous AI agents: 80% of employees say they use GenAI agents infrequently or not at all.
What’s especially interesting for marketers is the emotional context around these usage patterns. The workforce isn’t rejecting AI — in fact, it’s largely open to it. Half of employees (50%) say they’re curious about how AI will affect their work, and 41% are excited about it. At the same time, that optimism is coupled with anxiety: 47% of employees say they feel worried or confused about how AI could affect their work.
Interest is high, experimentation is happening, but widespread confidence and routine adoption haven’t fully happened yet.
29th Global CEO Survey: Leading Through Uncertainty in the Age of AI
The 29th Global CEO Survey reinforces a parallel theme at the executive level. AI is viewed as strategic, but its business impact is still uneven, and in many cases, unrealized.
CEO confidence in revenue growth is at a multi-year low. And while AI dominates strategic conversations, only 30% of CEOs say their organizations have increased revenue from AI over the last 12 months. Most leaders (56%) report they haven’t yet seen clear financial upside, whether through reduced costs, revenue growth or measurable efficiency gains.
That said, the report also makes an important distinction: Organizations that are seeing the strongest financial benefits from AI tend to have stronger AI foundations and deploy the technology more extensively across the business. The implication here is that returns aren’t coming from one-off pilots or siloed experimentation, but from operationalized, enterprise-level integration.
Still, relatively few CEOs say they’re applying AI to such an extent across their business today. The areas where they report more significant AI deployment include:
- Demand generation (22%).
- Support services (20%).
- Products, services & experiences (19%).
- Direction setting (15%).
- Demand fulfillment (13%).
Even at the highest levels, AI adoption is selective and, in many cases, still emerging.
What These Insights Might Mean for Marketers
There’s a lot of interesting information to unpack across these two reports, but for our intents and purposes, let’s focus on what they say about AI and how those insights might tie back to our marketing work.
Why AI’s Promise Still Outpaces Its Impact — and How the Data Suggests We Do It Differently
One of the most telling takeaways from PwC’s latest CEO and workforce surveys is the widening gap between enthusiasm for AI and its everyday impact. While CEOs overwhelmingly view AI as strategic — and most employees are curious or excited about it — many organizations aren’t yet seeing meaningful revenue gains or cost savings. Further still, only a small share of employees say they use generative AI daily.
In marketing, using AI to accelerate output is a common use case; however, the data suggests that we should be using it to improve outcomes. Instead of bolting it onto existing workflows, it should be meaningfully integrated into them.
As the 29th Global SEO survey sums up, “Our work … confirms mounting evidence that isolated, tactical AI projects often don’t deliver measurable value. Tangible returns come from enterprise-scale deployment consistent with company business strategy.”
So, the real opportunity lies in pushing beyond the experimentation phase and into intentional use cases — using AI to inform strategy, deepen personalization and surface insights that drive measurable value.
Employees Are Open to AI, but Aren’t Using It
PwC’s data also shows that employees are generally open to using AI, but aren’t actively doing so (50% are curious, 41% excited and only 13% using it daily). That inconsistency could, among other factors, point to a skills and enablement challenge. There are so many AI tools out there that the issue probably isn’t about access, but about clarity.
Being excited about but not using AI could signal that teams need guidance on when and how to use it effectively, i.e., to ensure outputs align with brand voice, accuracy standards and governance expectations.
And it’s not just about individual comfort levels; it’s also about whether organizations have actually built AI into workflows in a way that makes sense. CEOs themselves admit that only a relatively small portion of organizations are deploying AI extensively across core business areas — even in functions that map closely to marketing outcomes, such as demand generation.
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in marketing workflows, this data suggests that breadth of deployment and fluency will be the differentiating factors between high-performing teams and the rest.
What To Make of This for 2026
These reports reinforce the idea that AI isn’t a switch organizations can flip; it’s a capability that has to be built, governed and integrated over time.
The “twilight zone” I used to describe what seems to be happening right now is defined by uneven adoption: pockets of productivity gains, widespread curiosity, persistent uncertainty and limited proof of financial impact at scale. For marketers and brands in 2026, AI success is less about trying every new tool and more about operationalizing the right use cases with clear standards, training and measurable goals tied to real business outcomes.
