70 percent of organizations are developing AI apps

Over 70 percent of developers and quality assurance professionals responding to a new survey say their organization is currently developing AI applications and features, with 55 percent stating that chatbots and customer support tools are the main AI-powered solutions being built.

The research from Applause surveyed over 4,400 independent software developers, QA professionals and consumers explored common AI use cases, tools and challenges, as well as user experiences and preferences.

Over half of the software professionals surveyed believe Gen AI tools boost their productivity significantly -- as high as 49 percent to 74 percent. Yet, 23 percent of software professionals say their integrated development environment (IDE) lacks embedded Gen AI tools. A further 16 percent aren't sure if the tools are integrated with their IDE, while another five percent claimed that they have no IDE. GitHub Copilot (37 percent) and OpenAI Codex (34 percent) are still the AI-powered coding tools of choice.

With the rise of agentic AI, which makes decisions and performs actions autonomously without human oversight, rigorous testing is more critical than ever. Human intervention provides the most effective way to mitigate inaccuracy, bias, toxicity and other potential harms. The survey reveals the top AI QA activities that involve human testing include prompt and response grading (61 percent), UX testing (57 percent) and accessibility testing (54 percent). Humans are also essential in training industry-specific or niche models, with 41 percent of developers and QA professionals using domain experts for AI training.

From the consumer angle nearly two-thirds of those using Gen AI in 2025 report they have encountered some sort of issue with the experience, including biased responses (35 percent), hallucinations (32 percent) and offensive responses (17 percent). Within the past three months, only 35 percent report that they have not encountered any problems using Gen AI. That said, 78 percent of consumers state that multimodal functionality is important to them in a Gen AI tool, compared with 62 percent last year. The survey also found that Gen AI users are fickle with 30 percent having swapped one service for another, and 34 percent preferring different Gen AI services for different tasks.

"The results of our annual AI survey underscore the need to raise the bar on how we test and roll out new generative AI models and applications," says Chris Sheehan, EVP of high tech and AI at Applause. "Agentic AI is ramping up at a speed and scale we could hardly have imagined, so the risks are now amplified. Our global clients are already ahead of the curve by baking broad AI testing measures into development earlier, from training models with diverse, high-quality datasets to employing testing best practices like red teaming."

The full State of Digital Quality in AI 2025 report is available on the Applause site.

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