UK firms waste £11.7B yearly fixing AI 'slop' – 1 in 4 hours lost

A new report from Freshworks reveals a startling paradox in enterprise AI adoption: UK mid-market businesses are spending £11.7 billion each year correcting so-called 'AI slop' — the noise, errors, and irrelevant outputs generated by AI tools. The study found that 86% of IT leaders admit managing AI complexity has actually increased their team's workload rather than reducing it, with employees stuck in a loop of reviewing, revising, and regenerating content. On average, IT teams lose 26% of their time (roughly one in every four hours) to troubleshooting and complexity management.

The root cause isn't poor AI strategy, but the attempt to layer modern AI tools on top of legacy, fragmented tech stacks and inconsistent data. Only one in three surveyed companies has a formal, consistently-applied AI governance framework. As a result, IT leaders are under immense pressure: 81% fear their career progression is at risk if they can't show measurable ROI within one to two years, even though 72% of general business leaders expect returns within just eight months. Freshworks advises that the solution lies in resolving the AI context problem — by ensuring data quality and reducing fragmentation. Chief Product Officer Srinivasan Raghavan notes, 'The companies that move from purchase to performance fastest will turn AI from a complexity tax into a competitive advantage.'