From Exposure to Adoption: Generative AI in European Workplaces

Abstract

This study examines who adopts generative AI and whether early adoption has begun to reshape the task content of jobs across 35 European countries. Adoption ranges from under 3% to 25%. Occupational exposure strongly predicts uptake, but AI does not diffuse passively along exposure lines. At the worker level, skills, abstract task content, and employee organisational influence steepen the exposure-adoption gradient; at the country level, so do digitalisation and workplace training. A gender gap persists, concentrated in the most exposed occupations. A shift-share design finds no detectable effect of adoption on worker-reported task restructuring, consistent with an initial integration phase.