AI and cloud company MegazoneCloud said on Thursday that a survey it conducted with IT World/CIO from December last year to January this year found unofficial generative AI is being used for work at most companies. The survey covered about 600 people, including about 500 IT workers at South Korean companies.

MegazoneCloud and IT World/CIO compiled the findings into a report titled "Smart Work with BYOAI: AI Use Trends at South Korean Companies and a Governance Guide for Sustainable Growth".

According to the report, 86 percent of respondents said they were using generative AI tools informally at an individual or organisational level. In detail, 43.5 percent said they use them on a small scale for personal purposes, while 21.1 percent said they are used in a specific department. Another 10.7 percent said they are used across multiple departments, and 10.7 percent said they are used company-wide. By contrast, 9.6 percent said it was difficult to determine whether they are used, and only 4.4 percent said there was no use at all.

The top reasons for BYOAI were the need for AI tools suited to specific tasks at 37.6 percent and functional limits of the company's official AI tools at 36.7 percent. Cost efficiency, at 33.6 percent, was also cited as a major factor. The most common use case was document summarisation and report writing at 60.6 percent, followed by data analysis and deriving insights at 46.1 percent. Development and programming assistance, which has been gaining popularity under the label "vibe coding", drew 38.4 percent, while planning and strategy support drew 33.8 percent.

Only 7.7 percent of companies were found to have completely banned BYOAI. Some 23.7 percent said there were no separate controls or restrictions, while 19.6 percent said they encourage its use as long as basic security principles are followed. Nearly half of companies were leaving BYOAI use to employees' autonomy and responsibility.

The report presents specific figures on how South Korean companies are responding on the ground, including BYOAI spread by industry and company size, analysis of key tasks and departments using it, types of corporate policies on BYOAI, and strategies for building company-wide AI governance.

Seong-bae Gong (공성배), chief AI officer at MegazoneCloud, said that as BYOAI use becomes common, it is increasingly important to secure AI governance that maintains its value while keeping it within manageable boundaries. He said that for companies to use AI safely and effectively, they should build an official AI environment with minimum data controls based on policies and training, including blocking sensitive information, managing access rights, and a review system based on audit logs and usage history logs, and then step up organisational operating standards and accountability in stages.