Performative AI: Half Your Workforce Is Faking It
New research says 48% of employees have exaggerated their AI use to colleagues or leaders. The real problem isn't the tools. It's trust.
Nearly half of U.S. full-time employees say they've overstated how much they use AI, or how good they are with it. That's the headline from a new pulse survey of 1,000 workers by Visier, which gave the behavior a name: "Performative AI."
It's tempting to read that as a training gap. Give people better prompts, more licenses, a lunch-and-learn, and the pretending stops. The data points somewhere less comfortable.
Only 28% of employees say their leaders fully understand how they actually use AI today. Just 29% believe leaders recognize their concerns about it. And 59% either don't believe their employer has a clear plan for how AI will affect jobs, or aren't sure one exists.
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What the pretending is really telling you
People don't fake fluency when they feel safe. They fake it when they think the honest answer could cost them. Visier found that 45% of employees feel pressure to use AI at work, and seven in 10 are worried about what AI could do to their careers, with job loss leading those concerns.
Put those together and the picture is clear. Employees are performing for an audience they don't trust to read them accurately. That's not a skills problem. It's an emotional connectedness problem.
Why this hits harder after year one
At Best Practice Institute, our research behind Most Loved Workplace® spans 25 years, 2.8 million employees and more than 1,800 organizations. One pattern shows up again and again: emotional connectedness doesn't fade randomly. In a global study of a multinational manufacturer, we saw it erode structurally between year one and years three to four of tenure.
That's exactly the window where AI pressure lands hardest. Your experienced people know the work, know the politics, and know what happens to people who admit they're behind. They're the most likely to perform rather than ask for help, and the most expensive to lose.
The fix is visible leadership, not more tools
When Visier asked what would help, employees didn't ask for flashier software. 32% want more AI training and upskilling. 31% want greater transparency from leadership. 24% want more opportunities for career advancement. Only 12% said nothing would move them.
That's a workable list. Three moves we'd make this quarter:
- Publish your AI-and-jobs plan in plain language, even if it's incomplete. "Here's what we know and what we don't" beats silence.
- Make it safe to say "I don't know how to use this yet." Leaders go first.
- Measure how connected people feel, not just how often they log into tools. Usage dashboards reward performance. Connectedness data shows you the truth.
What to measure instead
Our Love of Workplace Index (LOWI), validated at a.95 coefficient alpha, measures the emotional connectedness that drives whether people stay, speak up and do their best work. Certified Most Loved Workplace® organizations see 48% lower turnover. If half your workforce is performing AI fluency, that's a signal you want before it shows up in your exit interviews.
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Source: Visier, "AI Usage At Work: 'Performative AI' Stems From Lack of Confidence in Leaders," pulse survey of 1,000 U.S. full-time employees, October 2026.
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Published in The Workplace Report by Best Practice Institute. See our methodology.