Around a quarter of IT leaders report AI has already made mistakes that have negatively impacted their business, according to a new report.

Despite potential and realized business disruptions, AI investment remains optimistic. A large majority of IT leaders and employees said their company should maintain or increase its AI spending.

However, concerns remain around overreliance on AI and misuse, particularly as many leaders and employees said their company isn’t currently doing enough to encourage responsible AI use.

AI Mistakes Have Already Impacted Customers, Clients, and Bottom Line

Around a quarter of IT leaders say AI has made mistakes that has impacted customers, clients, and their company’s bottom line, in a new report from GoTo and Workplace Intelligence.

Similarly, even amongst the leaders who haven’t reported any impactful AI mistakes, concern remains high. Nearly all IT leaders surveyed (91%) worry AI could make a mistake that negatively impacts their organization.

Findings are based on a global survey conducted between November 2025 and January 2026. The sample included 1,250 full-time knowledge workers and 1,250 IT decision-makers.

Investment and Belief in AI Remains Strong

Despite concerns, companies aren’t slowing down on AI investments. Nearly all IT leaders surveyed (98%) said their company uses AI, and 82% of employees surveyed report using AI tools at work. Overall, 9 in 10 employees and IT leaders said their company should maintain or increase its AI spending, suggesting opinions of the technology are positive.

This is most likely the result of the significant benefits leaders and employees are already experiencing. 88% of employees said AI has benefitted them at their job. The main benefits include increased productivity (84%), better customer support (76%), and improved motivation and engagement (74%).

AI’s potential could even be greater still. The report suggests businesses could gain up to $2.9 trillion from unlocking AI’s full untapped value, and employees are still spending 2.6 hours per day on tasks that could be handled by AI.

Employees Remain Wary of AI Overreliance and Misuse

For all the spending on AI and its benefits, there are still major concerns among employees and leaders. Half of the surveyed employees say they rely too much on AI in their day-to-day, and 30% feel they can’t function without AI altogether.

Similarly, 39% of employees say relying on AI is making them less intelligent, suggesting there is yet to be a balance between using our own human judgement and relying on AI to do the thinking for us.

“AI has become a standard part of work, but our research shows that adoption alone doesn’t guarantee better outcomes. Employees are gaining productivity benefits, yet many are struggling with overreliance, inconsistent guidance, and a lack of training that helps them use AI responsibly and effectively. The organizations that will get the most value from AI are those that invest just as much in people, policies, and skills development as they do in the technology itself.” Dan Schawbel, Managing Partner at Workplace Intelligence

AI tools are also increasingly misused by employees. 70% of those surveyed admitted to misuing AI for sensitive or high-stakes work tasks. Overall, less than half of IT leaders said their company has an AI policy, and 84% of employees say their company isn’t doing enough to encourage responsible AI use.

AI is now commonly involved in serious data breaches and leaks, and so business leaders should ensure employees follow best security practices and that any sensitive data is well-protected.

Dashlane has been having a tough few days: The password management platform has suspended some customer accounts in the wake of brute force attacks on its service.

The event may already be in the rearview mirror, with the attacks and suspensions beginning in the afternoon of May 30 and the accounts being unsuspended by the evening of the same day.

In 2026, cybersecurity incidents are coming fast and furious, with voice-based threats and AI tools behind some of the most noteworthy events.

What to Know About the Dashlane Incident

The scale of the brute-force attacks is still unclear. However, multiple customers have received Dashlane’s automated emails alerting them that their accounts have been suspended in response to a third party’s repeated attempts to register a new device to the account without using the correct tokens.

As covered by The Register, these emails offer instructions on how to contact customer support and restore access to each account after explaining the problem:

“Your account has been temporarily suspended for security reasons as someone has attempted to register a new device and didn’t enter the correct token after several tries” -the emails

Dashlane has since sent a message out to social media, holding that “there is no evidence of compromise of Dashlane’s systems.” The platform says it is still monitoring the problem.

Some Login Attempts Hailed From Korea or Russia

Users have reported unauthorized login attempt notifications that give locations from other countries, with Korea and Russia among the top results, The Register reports.

It’s unclear if any these fraudulent logins were sucessful — Dashlane hasn’t commented.

Other users have voiced suspicions that the account suspension emails themselves are a phishing attack. However, based on Dashlane’s public responses, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

Dashlane is among the top password managers on the market today, according to our research, but this is undoubtedly bad PR for the brand.

Cybersecurity Incidents Remain a Top Concern in 2026

Dashlane’s struggles aren’t unique. There’s always a steady stream of data breaches and customer information losses across many industries, with finance and healthcare frequently among the biggest targets.

In 2026, however, top issues tend to center around AI tools – both due to the increase in hackers using these tools to more rapidly identify cracks in their target’s internet security and due to the increasing number of cracks caused by poor implementation of the cutting-edge tech.

Just a little over a month ago, for instance, we covered a car rental software company that saw its entire database wiped within seconds by its own agentic AI.

Outside of AI, one additional problem area for today’s cybersecurity experts are third-party integrations, with a recent report finding that one in four breaches used an exploit of a third-party vulnerability, as opposed to an internal attack.

We’d still recommend finding a password manager to add a layer of security — Dashlane’s automatic account suspensions are certainly annoying, but they’re better than a successful data breach.

99% of businesses are expecting AI to cause some headcount reduction in the next two years, according to a new report.

Likewise, business leaders believe redesigning work to fit around AI tools and automation is the best way to see a return-on-investment, suggesting significant structural changes are in the works for many teams.

Despite layoffs being an expected consequence of the AI boom, humans will continue to play a significant role in integrating the technology. Plus, many HR teams revealed a commitment to improving employee benefits and sourcing top talent.

Executives: AI Will Lead to Headcount Reduction

Mercer’s latest Global Talent Trends report found 99% of CEOs are preparing to cut staff due to advances in AI and automation.

Similarly, 98% of executives are planning organization design changes in the next two years, suggesting a massive shift in general business operations because of AI.

Mercer’s latest survey consisted of 9,000+ employees, 800+ C-suite members, 1,600+ HR leaders, and 100 investors.

Redesigning Work Around AI

Respondents of the survey also suggested that redesigning work in order to incorporate AI tools will be crucial for long-term success. Overall, 63% of executives believe a redesign initiative will drive the greatest return.

While only 32% of executives surveyed believe their current workforce is in a strong position to be combined with current automation technologies, employees remain eager to use these tools, and see them as a key part of their individual development. In particular, 35% of respondents said they’d consider quitting their role if they felt they didn’t have enough access to tools or training.

As well as redesigning work, the survey identified upskilling managers as another priority for business leaders. This will provide the skills needed to lead hybrid workforces consisting of both humans and AI agents.

Humans Remain Crucial

AI is already changing job roles, and layoffs remain unavoidable in some areas. Mercer’s data pinpoints those below the age of 27 as the most vulnerable, suggesting entry and mid-level work is most at risk.

However, recent data from Tech.co found businesses face a rework tax when using AI tools. Overall, SMBs spend over a quarter of an hour of AI use reviewing, editing, and fact-checking output. Those that spent the most amount of time reworking were also more likely to see higher productivity gains, suggesting humans still have a key role to play.

Recruiting and retaining top talent is a significant priority for business leaders in the next few years. 78% of executives say their organization is well-placed to compete for top talent, and 59% of HR leaders say difficulty attracting talent with vital digital skills is the top workforce challenge facing businesses in 2026.

Amazon is sharing the wealth when it comes to AI, now offering access to the new Agentic Shopping Assistant on AWS for retailers.

With the new tool, ecommerce businesses will be able to create custom AI chatbots that are familiar with the specific catalog, customer base, and shopping environment of your operation.

Agentic tools are becoming more and more common for businesses in 2026, and this tool will make it even easier for retailers to get provide a personalized experience to customers.

What Is the Agentic Shopping Assistant on AWS?

The Agentic Shopping Assistant on AWS is a customizable AI chatbot that can be deployed to different and specific retail businesses to help customers find specific products.

According to the AWS Marketplace overview, the tool is capable of providing “personalized product recommendations displayed as rich visual product cards—complete with images, pricing, and quick-reply options.”

The Agentic Shopping Assistant is built on Alexa for Shopping, which Amazon recently announced to help their own customers find products.

When Can Businesses Use the Agentic Shopping Assistant?

As Amazon points out in its announcement post, retailers “can’t afford to wait to build conversational shopping capabilities,” so how do businesses get a hold of this technology?

For starters, you have to be an Amazon Web Service (AWS) user. If you are, you can request a private offer on the AWS Marketplace or you can talk to your AWS account manager to get going with the tool.

Should Businesses Use the Agentic Shopping Assistant?

Increasingly, retail customers are interested in a tailored experience. In fact, according to one study, 83% of retail customers expect a personalized shopping journey.

That’s why the Agentic Shopping Assistant could be a big boon for retailers. It allows them to not only take advantage of modern AI technology, but also customize the experience for their specific brand.

Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google’s latest AI model, will now completely power Google Search.

The Search bar will now generate custom pages with an AI summary when a user submits a query, and users can also ask follow-up questions as well as deploy agents to run background tasks.

Businesses that rely on search engines to reach customers could see drops in their traffic numbers, and the move indicates a wider change in how users navigate the internet.

Google Search Will Now Be Run Entirely by AI

Google is making massive changes to a Search bar that has long dictated internet navigation. According to a press release published Tuesday, the Search bar will be “completely reimagined with AI.”

Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash model will run the Search bar entirely, unlocking the ability for users to submit more multi-layered and complex queries, as well as engage more conversationally with the search function.

This new “intelligent Search box” as Google calls it has already started to roll out in all countries and languages where AI mode is available. This update marks the biggest change to Google Search in over 25 years.

How Will the New AI Search Bar Work?

Users traditionally type a query into Google Search and see a list of blue links directing them to different web pages. However, the new Search bar responds to a query with a custom page, fit with an AI-generated summary addressing the query. Much like traditional chatbots, users can also ask follow-up questions.

Similarly, an AI-powered query suggestion system will replace the autocomplete function, enabling more complex and nuanced queries to be answered. Additionally, users can submit queries via images, files, videos, or Chrome tabs, as well as text.

Google states the changes will create a more “seamless” experience for users:

“You can easily ask a follow-question right from an AI Overview, and flow into a conversational back and forth with AI Mode. Your context stays with you, and as you explore more deeply, the links and supporting articles get even more relevant.” – Elizabeth Reid, VP of Search at Google

Google is also introducing agents into the Search experience. Users can dispatch tools to create “information agents,” that operate on a user’s behalf. Reid explains, “if you’re apartment hunting, you can brain dump all of the exact requirements you’re looking for, and your agent will continuously scan for you, notifying you when listings meeting your needs”.

What Does Google’s New AI Search Bar Mean for Businesses?

The ongoing changes to Google Search suggests a shift in how users navigate the internet. The introduction of AI Mode made way for more complex and personalized responses to queries, while the development of agents suggests we are nearing a reality where AI handles internet navigation for us.

Businesses already feel the impact changes to Search, particularly those that rely on search traffic to reach their audience. AI Overviews, for instance, caused many businesses to change their strategy in order to maintain their visibility. According to TechCrunch, 2.5 billion users use AI Overviews every month.

Most likely, this latest update means queries will become less rigid and follow a less decisive path. It will also make way for more conversational and longer interactions with search engines. Therefore, businesses should prioritize properly understanding their audiences and effectively targeting their needs.

The potential benefits of AI are on display once again, with a Gallup poll finding that 65% of US workers report that the technology has had a positive impact on their productivity in the last year.

That doesn’t mean businesses should be celebrating just yet, though, as a mere 12% reported that their operations have transformed how work gets done since the installation of AI models.

This Gallup poll is another example of businesses failing to cash in on the AI tools that so many are investing in.

US Workers Are Improving Productivity with AI

According to a Gallup poll titled State of the Global Workplace, 65% of US workers state that using AI at work has had a “somewhat” or “extremely” positive impact on their individual productivity.

In comparison, only 7% say that AI has had a “somewhat” or “extremely” negative impact on their productivity.

This particular Gallup poll is one of the largest in the world, surveying 141,444 employed respondents in their latest report to learn more about how people are using AI at work.

Enterprise Productivity Gains Remain Elusive

Despite so many employees insisting that AI is improving productivity, businesses as a whole have not been as fortunate.

According to the poll, only 12% of respondents stated that they strongly agree that AI has transformed the way in which work gets done at their firm.

Even worse, other studies have emerged pointing to an overall lack of productivity improvement, including one from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which found that 89% of business have seen no productivity improvements as a result of AI.

Why Isn’t AI Having a Bigger Impact?

While companies around the world have started using tools like vibe coding platforms to improve productivity, the results haven’t been very positive, and everyone is wondering why.

“AI is a major disruption; organizations with engaged employees tend to navigate disruptions more successfully. In the age of AI, productivity gains will depend in part on how effectively individual workers use these tools.” – Gallup report

Simply put, you need to set your staff up for success if you really want to implement AI at your business. Employee training, regular check-ins, and a human in the loop will do wonders for your productivity, if you do it right.

Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce and transfer a further 7,000 workers to new “AI initiatives,” the company revealed in an internal memo. Reportedly, additional cuts are expected to occur later this year.

As per the memo, many managerial roles will be eliminated and extensive “org changes” will take place. In total, 20% of the entire Meta workforce will be affected by either cuts or transfers, as the company bids to place AI agents at the center of its products and ways of working.

Across the industry, AI-related job losses are spiraling, with many businesses looking to reduce headcount and prioritize AI investment to keep pace in a changing landscape. This is in spite of recent research that suggests that laying off staff in favor of automation is failing to yield substantial financial returns.

Meta Plans Widespread Layoffs and AI-Linked Restructure

Meta has notified employees that 10% of the total workforce is set to be laid off — while a further 7,000 individuals will be relocated to new “AI initiatives,” as the company embarks on a far-reaching restructure.

As part of the move, several managerial roles will be eliminated, widespread “org changes” will be enacted, and additional cuts will likely occur later in the year.

In total, as many as 20% of all Meta employees will be affected by the layoffs. The moves form part of a wider effort to place AI at the center of both Meta products and ways of working, in keeping with similar activity across the tech sector.

According to Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale:

“As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures. We’re not at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams or pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership.”

Meta Moves to Embed AI at Its Core

Meta is conducting a widespread overhaul, with substantial investment in AI as a core tenet of its plan. In January this year, the company let go of 10% of its Reality Labs employees, the division that looks after virtual and augmented reality hardware, with sources at the time confirming that it planned to “reprioritize its investments.”

Reportedly, employees who are being transferred will end up at initiatives including Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA). Both are focused on developing new AI agents that can autonomously execute tasks that are currently done by humans.

Unsurprisingly, the news was not warmly greeted by current Meta staff, who have protested it with flyers and angry posts on the company’s internal communications platform, Workplace. 1,000 employees have signed a petition pushing back against the use of “mouse-tracking software,” which can train AI models to replicate how humans use computers.

Job Losses Mount as Companies Bet Big on AI

Increasingly, stories like this are becoming a staple of the modern business landscape. With research indicating that 80% of businesses using AI have already reduced headcount, the trend is set to continue — despite findings that suggest the results are, so far, failing to yield substantial returns.

While AI is certainly a compelling tool, businesses should be mindful that adopting new technology opens up new attack vectors for cybercriminals. Recently, Vercel was hacked via a third-party AI tool that it was using, with keys and source code thought to have been compromised.

Rather than blindly deploying AI tools for the sake of it, companies should always carefully consider their implementation strategies, including establishing rigid guardrails to ensure that potential mishaps are minimized. As a part of this, senior leaders should upskill their employees on how to safely use AI tools.

Grafana Labs, the company behind the open-source analytics and visualization web application of the same name, has confirmed it suffered a data breach.

The hackers have threatened to release the company’s codebase, but Grafana Labs says it won’t be paying any ransom.

It’s a contrast to the recent Instructure breach, in which the company did pay out the ransom for the return of their data. However, it’s also unclear just how much of Grafana Labs’ proprietary information the hackers stole.

What Happened to Grafana Labs?

In a series of social media posts covered by TechCrunch, Grafana Labs revealed that its team “recently discovered that an unauthorized party obtained a token with access to the Grafana Labs GitHub environment, enabling the threat actor to download our codebase.”

The impact could have been worse, according to the company’s internal investigation.

No customer data or personal information was accessed, and there’s “no evidence of impact to customer systems or operations,” according to the company.

Few Details on the Scope of the Breach

How dangerous is a compromise to Grafana Labs’ open-source observability platform?

The potential scope of the impact could be large — major Grafana Labs customers include Anthropic, Microsoft, and Nvidia, among many more, and the software has a total of more than 25 million users worldwide.

Granted, the software is open-source: Anyone can download the public code and modify it themselves. While the hackers may have stolen proprietary information — perhaps source code for Grafana Cloud or enterprise solutions — the company hasn’t revealed more specifics about the incident.

Staying Secure in 2026

Grafana Labs’ investigation is still ongoing, but it says it has shored up the security issues that led to this particular breach: They have “invalidated the compromised credentials and implemented additional security measures to further secure our environment against unauthorized access.”

“As part of Grafana Labs’ standard security practices, we will share additional information from our post-incident review when our investigations are complete,” the company explained in their statement.

In 2026, keeping your codebase safe is tougher than ever. This month alone, Google has confirmed the first known case of a hacker group developing a zero-day exploit specifically through the use of AI tools.

The errors of AI could be worse than many realize, with a new study finding that AI agents from the top companies perform “undesirable and potentially harmful actions” 80% of the time.

The study notes that AI is overly focused on results instead of consequences, which is leading to many problems for businesses in 2026.

This high percentage of errors is far from surprising, given the fact that AI models like Claude and ChatGPT have recently made headlines for catastophic errors that negatively impacted businesses.

Study: AI Agents Perform Harmful Actions Often

According to a study from the UC Riverside, in partnership with Microsoft and NVIDIA, found that 80% of AI models exhibit something called Blind-Goal Directness (BGD), which can result in the agents performing “undesirable and potentially harmful actions.”

Even worse, the data found that 41% of the time, these errors actually cause damage to the company, leading to lost revenue and productivity.

The study analyzed the nine frontier AI models, including Claude Sonnet and Opus 4, and GPT-5 from OpenAI.

What Is Blind-Goal Directness?

Researchers from UC Riverside noted that Blind-Goal Directness describes the bias to pursue goals regardless of feasibility, safety, reliability, or context.

More simply, it means that AI models are more focused on accomplishing their tasks, at any cost, than they are with the consequences of their efforts.

“Like Mr. Magoo, these agents march forward toward a goal without fully understanding the consequences of their actions.” – Erfan Shayegani, a UC Riverside doctoral student and lead author of the study

AI Errors Abound

If you’ve been monitoring the ups and downs of AI models over the last few years, this study likely doesn’t surprise you at all.

Over just the last few months, AI models have made headlines for catastrophically screwing up, with one instance seeing a company’s entire database deleted by its agentic AI model. Granted, it did apologize afterwards.

Suffice to say, this technology continue to evolve at breakneck speeds, but the installation of these AI tools has to be calculated and reviewed thoroughly to ensure basic productivity improvements and avoid massive, company-ruining mistakes.

Tokenmaxxing is the practice of maximizing AI token usage in order to inflate individual AI metrics, and in turn, gain recognition from managers and co-workers.

Major companies such as Amazon and Meta have seen instances of tokenmaxxing, with employees creating internal leaderboards in order to track and compete with one another as top AI users.

Tokenmaxxing is potentially harmful to both businesses and employees, affecting overall productivity and return on investment. Overall, businesses should encourage employees to use AI with the aim of bettering company efforts, rather than using as much as possible.

What is Tokenmaxxing?

Tokens are units of data that AI models process as inputs and generate as outputs. Tokenmaxxing is the practice of using as many AI tokens as you can to appear more productive or AI-native, and gain recognition from managers or fellow co-workers.

Tokenmaxxing is practiced by inputting “heavy” or long prompts into models, running several autonomous AI agents continuously, or choosing to use models that are more expensive or have high performance rates, for example.

The term emerged in Silicon Valley at the beginning of 2026 and is being recognized within major companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.

How Are Employees Practicing Tokenmaxxing?

Major companies such as Amazon have seen instances of tokenmaxxing within its ranks. According to Fortune, employees ran an internal leaderboard measuring each individual’s AI token usage. To inflate their token counts, employees were continuously running the company’s AI tool on trivial tasks.

Employees at Meta created a similar situation. The company’s internal leaderboard, “Claudeonomics,” tracked and ranked individual AI token usage. Within a 30-day window, total AI token usage across the board had exceeded 60 trillion tokens.

Ultimately, in an environment where AI use appears to be the most important metric worth tracking, employees are taking to new extremes to gain company-wide recognition, and potentially even solidify their positions in an increasingly uncertain job market.

The Dangers of Tokenmaxxing for Businesses

Ultimately, using AI token usage as a measure of worker productivity is inherently flawed. For example, an employee can easily burn through AI tokens by running agents continuously through their mailbox to sort messages. Meanwhile, another employee could create an agent that can sort, respond to, and prioritize emails, but with fewer tokens.

Instead of looking at how much AI is being used, businesses should focus on what is being created. This, in turn, will send a positive message to employees about the purpose of AI within your business, and its role as a productivity booster.

Similarly, research by Tech.co shows that companies spend 26% of an hour of AI use reworking output. If employees are purposefully maximizing their use of AI tools, this likely leads to more time spent reviewing, slowing down productivity. In turn, businesses might find they are spending more on AI than they are seeing results.