AI in L&D is everywhere, but what separates the basic from the best?
2025 saw the biggest surge of AI-powered tools hit the L&D tech market.
Practitioners are dazzled by products that promise to automate our worries away. Yet, the real picture is hard to see. With everything looking the same, and seemingly offering the same thing. It’s hard for L&D teams to know what’s worth their often limited budget.
I’m sure you see the endless talk at events, conferences and on social media about AI use in L&D.
Yet, there feels like very little substance to it all.
It mostly focuses on tool hype and showcasing the latest gimmicky trend infecting our feeds, which we both know has little to no value.
So, this led me down a rabbit hole of questions.
- What are high-performing L&D teams doing with AI?
- What are the trusted AI-powered tools?
- How are they meaningfully supporting L&D work?
I’m no KPMG, PWC, BCG or any other 3 word consultancy with an army of consultants and flowing cash.
What I am armed with is nearly 20 years in learning tech as both a practitioner and consultant, a large audience of L&D professionals who share their stories with me and a curious mind that wants to craft that altogether.
I put all these questions to my newsletter audience of 5,000 L&D practitioners, and what follows are their collective responses.
My mission with this report is to help our industry understand the habits, behaviours and choices that L&D teams are making with AI.
WHAT WE DISCOVERED
Insight #1
Large Language Models are the primary AI tool of choice
But they use specialist tools for niche tasks
Insight #2
The Rise of The Shadow AI Stack
While most respondents have access to a suite of AI tools at work, they’re not huge fans of them.
Many respondents reported poor performance due to instances of approved company AI tools not being on the level of the widely available paid models that many use personally. It might be no surprise that Microsoft Copilot took most of this hate.
It seems many have access to Microsofts flagship AI product, yet they’d rather not.
This has created a lot of friction, and I’m sure its not exclusive to L&D. What I found in the data is that teams will use their mandated company AI tools for very little, and instead, engage with external tools as they provide much better quality.
These external tools can be classed as “shadow stacks”, aka tools being used in secret to complete work.
Insight #3
Company Tools Are The Go-To Option (sometimes)
Insight #4
The Value of AI is Growing Across The Workflow
The most valued benefit for practitioners still came through strong with reclaiming time, and that make sense, who doesn’t want more time?
Yet, the opening for using AI as more of a strategic partner in developing ideas, structuring thoughts and crafting new skills is growing.
HOW THIS SHAPES L&D PRACTITIONERS
What this tells us about L&D teams habits, choices and behaviours to drive value from AI
The bigger piece to talk about is what we can learn from the way teams and individual pros get value from these tools.
What’s most revealing is that understanding the value proposition for L&D also provides a framework for AI adoption.
I see the value of AI for L&D teams as 3 levels.
Some sit in one level, while others move freely across all 3 as new tools emerge. There is no one right way, and you might make a first point of entry into any of these.
From a high level, the value AI can bring to your work as of 2026 is through efficiency, quality and strategy combined.
From an adoption standpoint, this is what I class as the gateway drug to AI for L&D teams.
It’s the most common and immediate value driver for most.
It’s about speed, not necessarily quality (see next level). The tantalising prospect of saving time on the most mundane of tasks is so incredibly alluring that even the biggest AI haters will struggle not to turn their head.
This is where we sit in what I class as “The Efficiency Engine”.
I’ve always believed that any tool is only useful in the hands of a competent user, and this is no different with AI.
AI helping you to make your best work even better is highly admirable.
I know so many are obsessed with delegating work to sit on some mythical beach somewhere. Those people aren’t going to do much in life. Instead, those who use AI to amplify what they do today will be the winners.
What’s clear is that quality counts when working with AI, and knowing which niche tools can provide that is going to be your strategic advantage.
I see strategic partnering as bringing human thought/intelligence together with AI to uncover insights, points of view and develop ideas to do our best work.
This coma through clearly in the survey data.
Many practitioners referenced looking beyond AI for content creation and enhancing cognitive processes by unpacking collaborative and critical thinking tasks with AI.
Use cases that surfaced included:
- Acting as a sounding board, especially for solo pros
- Challenging assumptions and expanding current perspectives
- Refining and sense-making of thoughts
- Facilitating critical analysis of data and scenarios
So, when we talk about value and helping teams recognise this, and supporting adoption journeys, these 3 levels are a useful framing to consider.
WHAT NEXT
Get More Insights On How L&D Is Crafting Value with AI
This is a quick highlights of the most interesting insights.
If you’re a data nerd, here’s a few ways to unpack even more insights:
- Visit the in-depth report analysis
- Use this custom AI assistant trained on all the survey data to guide you through the insights and ask all of your questions (see below)
- Listen to this podcast episode (with me, not AI) for those audio learning vibes.
If you’re an L&D team that wants to learn more about this research and how you can leverage AI and tech intelligently in 2026, reach out to me.
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Discuss with AI
I thought there’s no better way to unpack L&D teams’ behaviours with AI than by using AI.
