FOI reference: FOI-2026-3675
You asked
I have reviewed your recent report, Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026, but it does not contain the level of industry detail I require.
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would be grateful if you could provide, for each of the following UK SIC (2007) codes, the total number of respondents and the number of respondents that reported using AI:
69102 – Solicitors
69201 – Accounting and auditing activities
64191 -- Banks
70221 – Financial management
66300 – Fund management activities
70229 – Management consultancy activities (other than financial management)
If you don't use UK SIC (2007) classification, please provide the data using a similar classification.
If possible, please provide the data broken down by business size (number of employees), using any size bands you might use internally. For example:
0–49 employees
50–99 employees
100–249 employees
250 or more employees
Please provide the data for the period covered by the report Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026.
We said
Thank you for your request.
While the article you have referenced uses Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) data, more information on artificial intelligence (AI) is available within the main BICS publication. A range of questions relating to AI are asked on a quarterly basis with various breakdowns by size and industry of businesses. Our latest BICS publication Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 2 July 2026 to include AI questions was in July 2026 (which were used within the article referenced).
Please find the information you have requested about the use of AI in UK businesses by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code in the associated download FOI-2026-3675 – Use of artificial intelligence in UK businesses by SIC code.
Please note suppression has been applied to some data in the spreadsheet to prevent individual businesses from being identified. This is necessary, as Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it a criminal offence for us to disclose information held by the Statistics Board (ONS) for statistical purposes that would identify a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses can be identified, Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.
Unfortunately we are also unable to break down the data we have provided down further by business size for the same reasons. As such, Section 44 of FOIA also applies to this information. You can however find the response counts for all businesses by selected business size groups in our published data tables in the "Number of Responses" tab.
Please also note that the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) sampling frame does not include businesses in the finance and insurance sector. We are therefore do not hold any information on businesses with the SIC codes 64191 (Banks) or 66300 (Fund management activities).