Around every fifth company (20%) in Germany uses technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI). This emerges from a study by the Federal Statistical Office, which surveyed legal entities with at least ten employees. The number of AI uses increased significantly within a year: in 2023, only about one in eight companies (12%) used artificial intelligence.
The evaluation shows: The use of AI is much more common in larger companies with 250 or more employees than in medium-sized and small companies. 48% of large companies use artificial intelligence, but only 28% of medium-sized companies with 50 employees and 17% of small companies with 10 to 49 employees. However, growth can be observed across all company sizes. The main reason given for non-use was primarily a lack of knowledge (71%), followed by uncertainty about the legal consequences (58%) and concerns about maintaining data protection and privacy (53%). Around 21% of companies do not consider the use of artificial intelligence to be useful.
The most common use is in analysis: 48% of companies use the technologies to analyze written language (48%), for speech recognition (47%) or to generate natural language (34%). These functions are primarily used in the areas of marketing and sales, but also in production and service processes (25%), the organization of company administrative processes or management (24%) as well as for accounting, controlling or financial management (24%).
