AI ‘workslop’ costing companies millions

October 10, 2025

A new study by Stanford and BetterUp Labs, published in collaboration with Harvard Business Review, has revealed that companies are beginning to feel the hidden cost of so-called AI “workslop” — content that looks professional at first glance but is shallow and unusable, shifting the real work onto other employees.

The research, which surveyed more than 1,100 U.S. workers, found that 41% of respondents received AI-generated content in the past month that they had to manually correct or rewrite. On average, employees spend 116 minutes fixing each such document, email, or presentation.

According to BetterUp’s calculations, this represents a hidden cost of $186 per employee per month, or thousands of dollars annually per team — resources lost due to the illusion of productivity. It is estimated that as much as 15.4% of business communication already falls into this category.

The most affected sectors are professional services and technology, where “workslop” is most often exchanged among colleagues, less frequently with management. Researchers also noted a decline in trust and perceived creativity among colleagues who often send such AI outputs — employees see them as less reliable and less competent.

The “workslop” phenomenon highlights the dark side of rapid AI adoption: while AI is supposed to increase productivity, in practice many are using it as a tool to fully offload cognitive work — which instead of helping, creates an additional burden for teams. If the trend continues, this “silent cost” is expected to grow in proportion to the adoption of AI tools in the workplace.

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