Why 95% of GenAI Pilots Fail (and What Tech Writers Can Do About It)

A recent MIT report dropped a statistic so grim it feels like it deserves its own sympathy card

95% of corporate generative-AI pilots are failing.

If that number surprises you, congratulations on being new to enterprise life. For everyone else — especially technical writers — it confirms what we suspected the moment someone said, “Let’s try AI! How hard could it be?”

The MIT report points to poorly prepared content, vague business goals, and content governance practices so thin you could blow on them and watch them evaporate. And underneath it all sits a truth tech writers have muttered for years: most companies are shoveling unstructured, inconsistent, poorly labeled content into AI systems and hoping for miracles.

Below is what the research found — and what technical writers can do before someone declares another AI pilot a “learning experience.”