The Morning Download: The AI Superfans Companies Count On to Convert Skeptics

Good morning. Large companies, looking to push AI adoption ever-higher, are increasingly mobilizing internal groups of AI ‘champions’ as a way to sell their more reluctant colleagues on the technology’s value.

Companies are spending heavily to remake their businesses around the technology only to find that workers who either don’t trust the tools or don’t know how to use them are among the biggest roadblocks, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Isabelle Bousquette reports.

“Humans don’t like to change,” said Howard Glazer, co-head of Ropes & Gray’s global private-equity transactions practice and himself an internal “champion” at the law firm. “Saying ‘Here use this new tool’ is scary to people,” he told Isabelle.

That said, companies are making progress. According to a June report from Boston Consulting Group, 74% of front-line employees, defined as individual white-collar workers with no managerial responsibilities, are now regular AI users, tapping it daily or several times a week. That’s up from 51% in BCG’s 2025 report.

At Ropes & Gray, they have helped drive adoption of legal AI products like Harvey. Two years ago, 32 Ropes & Gray users sent a few hundred prompts a month to Harvey. Today, nearly 2,200 Ropes & Gray employees generate over 282,000 prompts monthly, and each user is three times more active than a year ago, the company said.

It’s vital to educate people on using the tool for real tasks they’re working on, said Josh Goldsmith, head of Digital Solutions and Innovation for Internal Audit and an AI champion at Citigroup.

Adoption of Citi Stylus Workspaces, the most broadly available AI tool for workers at the company, has crept up from the single digits in late 2024 when it was rolled out to more than 80% now. The company said it credits its champion and accelerator program in part with that increase.

Tech leader takeaway. Here are Isabelle’s best practices for running an AI Champions program:

• Recruit the right profiles: Look for individuals with innate curiosity and strong interpersonal skills rather than the most technical background.
• Think incentives: Provide clear perks to motivate employees to join the program such as early access to new AI tools.
• Refocus the adoption tactics: Have champions prioritize one-on-one, face-to-face interactions and train employees on live, real-world tasks.
• Frame the message: Champions should be honest about the learning curve and acknowledge worker concerns.

Does your company tap into the power of socialization to drive AI adoption? We'd love to know.

• China's cybersecurity agency claims it found "security backdoor vulnerabilities" in Anthropic's Claude Code that could send user location and identity data to remote servers without consent, the WSJ reports. China’s move came after a post on online forum Reddit last week alleged that Anthropic had secretly inserted code into the software to identify users who accessed it from China.

• Meanwhile, CNBC reports that U.S. House committees are citing cybersecurity concerns as they investigate firms like Cursor and Airbnb over their exposure to Chinese AI models. Some government departments have banned the use of DeepSeek, and other Chinese models, but use by U.S. companies is not prohibited.

• OpenAI is widely releasing its advanced GPT-5.6 model family on Thursday and expanding its global preview, after initially limiting access under pressure from the Trump administration, Bloomberg reports. 

• Apple announced a new five-year, $30 billion chip deal with Broadcom as part of the company's broader $600 billion U.S. investment pledge that helped it avoid Trump administration tariffs, the WSJ reports. Apple said the investment will enable Broadcom to expand a manufacturing facility in Fort Collins, Colo.

• Anthropic will lease a 16-story building at 330 Hudson Street in Manhattan as it doubles its New York workforce to 1,000 people this year, the New York Times reports. The city has emerged as a new hub for the industry, the WSJ earlier reported, with AI firms leasing 1 million square feet of Manhattan office space in the first quarter.

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Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute's new Executive Resilience series, where she's profiling America's top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

Follow Belle Lin on LinkedIn and X for her latest reporting on enterprise technology and AI.

Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at the WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Tom Loftus is the editor of The Morning Download. He suggests following Isabelle, Belle and Steve on their various social channels. But if you insist, here's his LinkedIn.