New study reveals speed is driving GenAI usage in thought leadership across North America and Western Europe. But there is a danger that newfound efficiency gains may lead to ‘more of the same’ rather than improving content quality and trust, report suggests.
LONDON, ENGLAND – MARCH 17, 2026 – A greater proportion of senior editorial leaders who create thought leadership in Western European-based enterprises have embedded Generative AI (GenAI) ‘extensively’ in content creation workflows than their North American counterparts, according to new research.
The findings, revealed in Collective Content’s latest report, The State of AI in Thought Leadership, suggest that while just over half of leaders in both regions describe their organisation’s use of GenAI ‘selectively for specific tasks’, while 36% of European* respondents said they are ‘using it extensively across many content workflows’ compared to just a fifth (20%) of American respondents.
The report surveyed senior leaders with content responsibilities at medium-sized and large companies in the technology, telecoms and professional services sectors to find out how GenAI is being used across their organisations to produce thought leadership and longform content.
Europeans ‘more advanced’ at mastering GenAI to ‘go deeper’ into data – North Americans embrace ‘more cautious and tactical’ use cases
One trend is that North Americans are more likely to pursue uses of GenAI such as idea brainstorming (73% vs 64% for European counterparts) and drafting content briefs (60% vs 45% for European counterparts).
Those in Europe report a higher rate of deeper usage on tasks such as data analysis and synthesis for content creation (43% vs 35% for North American counterparts) and research summaries (65% vs 52% for North American counterparts).
The experimentation era is over but public LLMs are still a popular choice in the AI toolkit
Revealing the tools that respondents are using across their thought leadership content workflows – from company-built tools, AI integrated in common business software, through to public LLMs, public LLMs still came out on top overall (78%), used by 83% of North Americans leaders and 73% of respondents from Europe.
This was followed by 65% of respondents saying they rely on GenAI features embedded in software (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Adobe Firefly, Salesforce), 54% who use enterprise-licensed LLMs, and just over a third (35%) who use company-built AI tools.
Speed is driving GenAI use in thought leadership across industries
- Speed was the highest ranked reason respondents gave for using GenAI in thought leadership production overall (61%)
- This scored much higher than improvements in quality (46%) and cutting costs (23%)
- Only 42% gave ‘reducing the team’s workload’ as a primary reason for deploying GenAI
- Almost 20% of respondents say there has been a significant reduction in the amount of time that their team spends on content creation tasks, while 48% note there has been ‘some reduction’
Human expertise is still where the quality lies
- Almost half of respondents said the quality of GenAI-produced content for thought leadership is either ‘Good’ (41%) or ‘Adequate’ (44%) with just 8% calling it ‘excellent’.
- While GenAI scored well with respondents for tasks such as ideation and summarising research, concerns were raised around:
- ‘originality/differentiated points of view’,
- ‘emotional intelligence/audience understanding’,
- ‘accuracy’,
- ethical/compliance issues
- working with proprietary or sensitive data, which scored the lowest
Tony Hallett, MD at Collective Content, said:
“Balancing humans and AI is a work in progress — in any line of work — and this is no different for the largest companies employing thought leadership to be more successful with their customers and prospects.
“But our recent research has unearthed some subtle differences between users of AI for thought leadership in North America and their peers in similar companies in Western Europe. For one thing, we wouldn’t have guessed European users are more advanced in many aspects of their usage.
“Furthermore, our research shows improved speed as the number one reason for employing AI (61%), far ahead of reasons such as improvement in quality (46%) or cutting costs (23%).
“But with that extra speed, we feel it’s important organisations don’t just produce more of the same output or cut costs — this human plus AI combination is an opportunity for companies to put more effort into better, truly differentiated insights and content to stand above their competitors with the best thought leadership.”
Report methodology
Where cited, European refers to the Western Europe survey sample. The survey was carried out by High Beam Global for Collective Content's The State of AI in Thought Leadership report. The sample consisted of 150 senior leaders across North America and Western Europe, whereby respondents took part in an online survey. The online survey took place in January 2026.
About Collective Content
Collective Content is the go-to content agency for B2B tech, telecoms and professional services companies. We make sense of the world of thought leadership and -- through media-grade content -- we make sense of much more for our clients' customers and prospects, leading to improved trust and business results. https://collectivecontent.agency/