Title: Seven in ten UK firms are still on the side of the pool | InkByte infographics URL: https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/ai-adoption-lido/ Markdown: https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/ai-adoption-lido.md Description: We drew UK business as a 1930s lido of 100 people. Three in ten are swimming. Asked what had held them back, fewer firms pointed to the price of a ticket than you'd think. ONS, BICS Wave 165 # Seven in ten UK firms are still on the side of the pool We drew UK business as a 1930s lido of 100 people. Three in ten are swimming. Asked what had held them back, fewer firms pointed to the price of a ticket than you'd think.  Seven in ten UK firms still aren’t using AI. InkByte, inkbyte.co.uk. **What to notice:** Three in ten are in the water. On the admission board, cost comes behind expertise and trust. **Source:** ONS, Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), Wave 165, 8 October 2026, [ons.gov.uk](https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/businessservices/bulletins/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomy/8october2026) Every pool has someone stood on the side with their toes in the water, telling everyone it's not that cold. Going by the latest ONS numbers, most UK firms are on the side when it comes to AI, and that's the picture we went with for our new InkByte graphic. The Office for National Statistics asks businesses about AI in its Business Insights and Conditions Survey, BICS for short. In Wave 165, with fieldwork from 21 September to 4 October 2026 and published on 8 October, 64.1% of firms said they don't currently use any AI technology. Another 6.2% weren't sure. Put those two together and you get 70.3%, which is our calculation, and that's where the seven in ten comes from. Take both away from 100 and you're left with 29.7% using at least one AI technology. That one's calculated as well. So we drew it as a lido, one person for every 1% of firms. 30 are in the water using AI. 6 sit on the edge with their feet in, not sure. The other 64 are up on the terraces. I want to be careful with those 64, because the label matters. They told the survey they don't currently use AI, and that's all it means. It doesn't mean they've never tried it and it doesn't mean they've ruled it out. Some will have good reasons, some won't have got round to it, and that one question can't tell you which is which. The 6 on the edge are my favourite bit of the whole thing. 6.2% of firms weren't sure whether they use AI at all. My guess, and it is a guess, is that a lot of AI now turns up inside software people already pay for, so you can be using it without anyone calling it that. Or whoever filled in the form didn't know what the rest of the office was up to. Either way I'd not count them out. They've got their feet wet. The water's filling up, mind. Comparing the September waves each year (Waves 92, 117 and 141, with each year's figure calculated by us), AI use went from 9.4% in 2023 to 14.7% in 2024, then 23.5% in 2025 and 29.7% now. That's roughly 3.2 times where it was three years ago, again by our working. A lot of people have got changed in three summers. The bit that caught me out was the admission board. The survey also asks what had prevented or delayed a firm adopting AI in the last three months. You'd expect cost to top that list. It didn't. Cost was 7.7%, behind lack of expertise (9.3%) and lack of trust in AI product safety or transparency (9.2%). The most common answer, by some way, was firms saying they hadn't attempted it yet, at 21.8%. The only bigger response was the 49.0% who said nothing had prevented or delayed them. Two things to be straight about before anyone runs off with that. Those percentages are shares of all firms, AI users included, so they aren't shares of the people on the terraces. And firms could pick more than one answer, so you can't add them up, or read 21.8% as the share of non-users who haven't tried. What you can say is that more firms pointed to not having had a go than pointed to the price. My reading, and it's only mine, is that this is good news. Cost is a hard problem for a small business. Saying you haven't tried something yet sounds more like a time thing, and maybe a where do I even start thing, which the expertise figure hints at as well. Neither of those needs a budget line, if a firm ever does fancy a go. I build things with AI myself, so I'm hardly neutral. I don't think anyone on the terraces needs a lecture, though. Being careful with a new tool is a sensible instinct, which is probably what that 9.2% on trust is telling us. If anything, that's a message for the people building these tools more than for the firms sat watching. Size makes a difference. Just over half of firms with 250 or more employees use AI (50.9%, calculated). Sector does too. Information and communication firms are at 60.0% and construction is at 14.1%, both calculated. I'd not read that as one lot being keen and the other lagging behind. If most of your day is spent on a building site and not in a spreadsheet, the obvious uses look very different, and some of them probably haven't been built yet. Now the small print, because it matters here. BICS figures are official statistics in development, which is the ONS label for numbers that are still being developed and tested, and the ONS advises caution when using them. They're weighted estimates. The survey leaves out agriculture, finance and insurance, energy and the public sector, so your local farm or bank won't be in that pool. They come from a sample too. The ONS puts the 64.1% somewhere between 61.4% and 66.9%, and the 6.2% between 4.8% and 7.5%, at 95% confidence. On the graphic one person is 1%, so read the head count on each step as a picture of the figures, not a register of who turned up. None of that changes the shape of it. Seven in ten firms on the side, and the share in the water up every September since 2023. If your business is up on the terraces, you're in the majority, and the graphic says that better than I can. The full version is at the top if you want to share it with someone who's sat on the side. Rory At InkByte we go looking for public numbers that are already out there but easy to miss, and turn them into pictures people stop scrolling for. This one started life as a few tables in an ONS spreadsheet, mostly read by people who already work with it. We turned them into a 1930s lido because everyone knows a lido, where some people swim and plenty are happy up on the terraces. The sunny backdrop was made with AI, and every bather and every number on it is drawn in code, so the head count matches the survey each time it renders. More at inkbyte.co.uk. ### Sources - Source: ONS, Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), Wave 165, published 8 October 2026. - ONS, Business insights and impact on the UK economy, 8 October 2026 (bulletin): [https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/businessservices/bulletins/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomy/8october2026](https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/businessservices/bulletins/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomy/8october2026) - ONS, BICS Wave 165 final weighted dataset (AI use, barriers, size and industry tables): [https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomy/bicswave165/bicswave1652final.xlsx](https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomy/bicswave165/bicswave1652final.xlsx) - ONS, BICS Wave 165 confidence intervals: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomyconfidenceintervals/bicswave165/wave165confidenceintervals.xlsx](https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/businessinsightsandimpactontheukeconomyconfidenceintervals/bicswave165/wave165confidenceintervals.xlsx) 29.7% (100% minus 'don't currently use' minus 'not sure'), 70.3% (64.1 plus 6.2), the September figures for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (9.4%, 14.7%, 23.5%), roughly 3.2 times (29.7 / 9.4), 50.9%, 60.0% and 14.1% are calculated by InkByte from the ONS tables. 64.1%, 6.2%, their 95% ranges and the barrier figures (21.8%, 9.3%, 9.2%, 7.7%, and the 49.0% who said nothing had prevented or delayed them) are the ONS's own. Barrier figures are a share of all firms, including AI users, and firms could pick several answers. The ONS bulletin gives the rounded versions: 30%, 9% for 2023, 51% and 60%. Official statistics in development. Weighted estimates; UK businesses of all sizes, excluding agriculture, finance and insurance, energy and the public sector. ### Alt text **Alt text (all sizes)** Infographic in the style of a 1930s Art Deco lido poster, headlined “Seven in ten UK firms still aren’t using AI.” UK business is shown as a lido of 100 bathers, one per 1% of firms. 30 swimmers in amber caps are in the pool, labelled “In the water: use at least one AI technology”. 6 figures sit on the pool edge with their feet in the water, labelled “On the edge: not sure if they use AI”. 64 figures sit on the stepped terraces, labelled “On the terraces: say they don’t use AI”, with the line “Not in yet? You’re in the majority, not behind.” A tally board shows bathers per 100 each September: 9 in 2023, 15 in 2024, 24 in 2025, 30 in 2026. An admission board asks what keeps them out of the water: haven’t tried AI yet 22%, lack of expertise 9%, lack of trust 9%, cost 8%, noting that cost comes behind expertise and trust. Source: ONS Business Insights and Conditions Survey, Wave 165, 21 September to 4 October 2026. inkbyte.co.uk ### Share and download sizes - Portrait, 1080 x 1350: [PNG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_portrait-1080x1350.png) · [SVG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_portrait-1080x1350.svg) - X landscape, 1600 x 900: [PNG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_x-landscape-1600x900.png) · [SVG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_x-landscape-1600x900.svg) - Square, 1080 x 1080: [PNG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_square-1080x1080.png) · [SVG](https://infographics.inkbyte.co.uk/assets/lido-ai-adoption_square-1080x1080.svg) Also from InkByte Client Brand Brain turns a brand's voice into a reusable AI pack: a PDF voice guide plus a ready system prompt. 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