Research finds creative professionals often hide their own AI use from peers

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New research from Anthropic surveyed professionals across creative and technical fields about how they actually use AI in their daily work, and found that a striking 69 percent mentioned facing real social stigma around using AI tools at work, with many admitting they deliberately keep their AI use quiet from colleagues. One fact-checker interviewed said a colleague recently mentioned hating AI, and that they simply said nothing in response, adding that they don't tell anyone their actual process because they know how strongly many people feel about it

Among creative professionals specifically, 70 percent described actively managing peer judgment around their AI use, with one artist saying they don't want their brand and business image to become too closely tied to AI given the stigma surrounding it. The research found genuinely divergent emotional patterns across different creative disciplines, game developers and visual artists reported both high satisfaction and elevated worry simultaneously, while designers showed the opposite pattern, notably low satisfaction paired with real frustration. Trust in AI tools stayed consistently low across every discipline surveyed, reflecting shared uncertainty about what AI actually means for the long term future of creative work specifically

The researchers acknowledged real limitations in their methodology, noting participants were recruited through crowdworker platforms, which may skew results toward people with more positive or more experienced perspectives than the broader working population might actually hold. Curious what people think explains this specific pattern of quiet AI use, is the stigma genuinely justified given legitimate concerns about originality and labor displacement, or has it become a kind of unfair moral pressure that doesn't match how normalized these tools have actually become in daily practice

She asked people to write down their AI secrets. The confessions came pouring in.www.businessinsider.com