“I’ve played with ChatGPT, but I wouldn’t bet my box‑office on it.”
That throw‑away remark, shared by a venue marketer, sums up the mix of excitement and caution we picked up in our first AI survey run in the first half of 2025. Since then, we’ve been crunching numbers and reading the comments and learning where we are as a sector with AI. This blog shares what we found, the stories we read and a few tips for preparing for the AI journey ahead.
As part of our first AI benchmarking survey, we invited people working in UK arts, culture and heritage to complete an online questionnaire. We sent it out to our mailing list of over 2,000 people working in the sector and promoted it on social media and our LinkedIn channels along with promoting it on industry other newsletters. 92 organisations completed our 23 question survey – from volunteer‑run museums to national producing houses.
Who is using AI?
At a glance, the sector is already dipping more than a toe in the water. Two-thirds of respondents (67%) say their organisation has tried at least one AI tool for marketing, while a third (33%) remain on the sidelines. We see this reflected in our webinars on the topic. This suggests that AI has evolved from being a fringe experiment since ChatGPT was launched at the end of 2022. Instead, it’s becoming standard practice, even if adoption is still uneven. For boards and teams yet to start, the message is less “should we?” and more “when?”. For early adopters, the challenge is to move from isolated trials to embedded, measurable workflows. This baseline sets the context for all of the following results in the survey.
Which AI tools or areas are you using
From the results to our next question, text-generation tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper and GrammarlyGO dominate the copywriting tools by 80% of the respondents. Content creation for social media is used by just over half of the respondents, while image and video generation tools follows as the next most popular use. While email personalisation (18%) is next, it’s interesting to see that AI is starting to be used for audience (11%) and data (10%) analysis.
What factors are stopping you from using AI right now?
We may not be suprised that lack of training is seen as a barrier to AI adoption with two thirds of respondents citing this reason. But ethical reasons and data privacy concerns are also significant blockers for others. A healthy dose of sceptiscm is holding some people back. Maybe they’re wary following the hype that surrounded the metaverse which is yet to deliver.
Which best describes your organisation’s AI adoption stage?
Most organisations are still sizing up the technology from a safe distance. Nearly half of all respondents (about 48%) put themselves in the “curious / exploring” camp, while another third (roughly 35%) have progressed to “experimenting with specific tools.” Only 3% of the entire sample say they have AI embedded in day-to-day marketing and around 14% are “not considering AI” at all. In the results, we can see a base of tentative testers feeding into a very narrow tip of fully-fledged adopters. There is still plenty of room and time to move up the ladder, but the real challenge over the next year will be how quickly teams can turn early trials into repeatable, measurable workflows.
How confident are you in using AI for marketing tasks?
It seems one answer here is that the respondents are cautiously curious rather than raring to go. Asked to rate their confidence on a five-point scale, most people landed in the low-to-middle band — clustered around 2 or 3 out of 5, with only a small handful ticking a more confident 4 or 5. In other words, the tools are no longer mysterious, but few practitioners would call themselves fluent. The real value of this chart is the warning it carries for leaders: upgrading technology alone won’t move the dial unless teams also gain the skills and head-space to use it comfortably. Training, mentoring and protected “sandbox” time remain vital ingredients.
To what extent do you feel AI is valued within your organisation’s culture?
When we asked respondents to score how much their organisation values AI (again on a 1-to-5 scale), the results leaned toward the cautious end: the largest cluster sat at 2, signalling “mild interest but no real priority,” with another sizeable group at 3 (neutral). Only a small minority — roughly one in ten — chose 4 or 5, indicating that AI is already woven into the organisation’s culture and forward plans. The implication is clear: even where teams are experimenting, senior enthusiasm and formal endorsement lag behind. If you’re championing AI internally, this chart is your licence to start the conversation about where the technology sits in the wider strategy and how to move it from experimental sideline to supported initiative.
What is your main reasons for exploring or adopting AI in marketing
We gave a limited list of options for the next question and respondents had to pick out just one. Almost two thirds of respondents picked “saving time” as their number-one motive. We’re imagining things like bulk-captioning videos, generating first-draft press releases or batch-cropping images for a website. Far behind the lead is Audience insights and Personalising campaigns. Hardly anyone selected the cost option and no one suggested an alternative to the responses we offered.
Which aspect of your marketing do you most hope AI will improve?
Top of the wish-list and chosen by a third of respondents is day-to-day efficiency through automating tasks. In second place comes creative lift from using AI to spark fresh ideas, colour palettes or headlines when inspiration runs dry. A close third is audience development such as spotting who’s drifting away, predicting which offer might tempt them back, and tailoring emails at scale. A handful of respondents also cite accessibility tweaks (auto-generated alt text, live-captioning) and analytics clean-up. It seems from this that marketers value AI most when it frees up brain-space, fuels fresh thinking and sharpens audience reach.
What proportion of your marketing budget is allocated to AI tools, subscriptions, or training
The chart shows that AI still draws only pocket-money levels of investment across the sector. Almost three-quarters of organisations (77 %) commit less than five per cent of their marketing budget to AI tools, subscriptions or training. A further one in ten allocate 5–10 %, and only a handful break into double-digits. 13% aren’t sure what they spend at all. While curiosity is high, funding remains modest, suggesting most teams are still trialling low-cost tools rather than making strategic, long-term decisions. If AI is to shift from experiment to essential, the budget line will need to grow – probably backed by clear evidence of time saved or income generated.
On average, how many hours per week does your team spend on AI-related activities (training, experimenting, implementing)?
Most respondents admit they’re still fitting AI work into the gaps between everything else. Two thirds of the sample are spending less than an hour a week. Another quarter spend one to three hours. Fewer than one in ten devote more than five hours. Overall, the average commitment hovers around two hours per week, reinforcing the message from the budget data: AI is being explored in short bursts rather than as a fully planned work stream. For organisations keen to move faster, the simplest approach may be to ring-fence a modest block of weekly hours so that experimentation isn’t always squeezed out by last-minute event/show announcements.
Over the next year, how do you plan to use or expand your use of AI in marketing?
Do you think AI will become an essential part of arts marketing in the next few years?
The verdict from our respondents is a firm – though not unanimous – yes. Over two thirds declared “Yes, absolutely”, signalling they expect AI to be a routine part of arts marketing toolkits within the next few years. About a quarter chose the middle ground “Not sure yet, but probably” while only a small single-digit minority believe AI will stay optional. The graph suggests cautious optimism rather than blind certainty: most marketers can see the inevitability of AI, even if they’re still working out the timelines and practicalities. For leadership teams the conversation has already shifted from ‘if’ to ‘when’ and the organisations that make time for structured experimentation now will be better placed when the sector’s tipping point arrives.
Which emerging AI technology most intrigues you for arts marketing?
We had a range of responses best summarised by the following list in no particular order.
- Audience insights and targeting
- Email automation
- Product creation
- Google presence
- Image and video generation
- CoPilot, ChatGPT
- Notetaking, transcribing, minute taking
- Personalisation
- Alt text
- Strategy
How was AI used in this report?
As we come to the end of this report, the reader may have wondered how much of this article was written by AI. I’m can share that while I tried more than three ways for ChatGPT to produce an article I was happy with, in then end I had to take matters in to my own hand. I could have kept trying new prompts until I was satisfied with the results but I was also finding it was making information up and there were lots of inaccuracies. I also could have tried other tools. It just seemed quicker to write this one myself. That’s not to say it didn’t help me along the way with suggestions and pointers. I’m a seasoned user of tools like Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity to summarise information, create graphs, and plan processes and use them different tools on daily basis but on this occassion the old fashioned approach prevailed.
So what have we learned?
Taking a step back from the results, it seems AI is no longer the novelty it was in 2023 and 2024; two-thirds of arts marketers have already rolled up their sleeves and had a go. It’s no wonder, with the pressure to do more with less that we’re using copy generator tools and trying out image creators. Yet the sector is still feeling its way forward. Time, lack of skills and budget are the three things holding some of us back. Sounds familiar?
What this means for the year ahead is clear. Organisations that make time to experiment, invest in training and put a simple ethics checklist in place are likely to move fastest from entry level tests to meaningful gains. They’ll also gather the evidence such as hours saved, audiences reached that persuade senior management or budget managers to back bigger trials. AI will not replace the human insight that underpins great arts marketing, but it is rapidly becoming the co-pilot many of us need to do more with less. Our collective task now is to turn curiosity into capability, and isolated wins into shared practice, before we rerun this benchmark in 2026.
Get involved in the 2026 survey – see the links below.