ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Artif. Intell.
Sec. AI in Business
Technostress and Generative AI in the Workplace: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Professionals
Provisionally accepted
- 1University Osnabrueck, Department of Information Management and Business Informatics, Osnabrueck, Germany
- 2Smart Enterprise Engineering, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (DFKI), Osnabrueck, Germany
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This study examines the impact of the rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on work processes in various industries. On the one hand, GenAI is seen as a tool to increase productivity; on the other hand, its adoption also might entail challenges such as technostress. This qualitative study explores how young professionals perceive GenAI as a potential new stressor at their work. Based on 15 expert interviews, established technostress dimensions are analyzed and new stress-related factors are identified. The results show that regulatory uncertainty, dependency on AI tools, and the need for increased control and validation of AI-generated output and an upcoming role shift could create additional stress. Simultaneously, respondents experience positive stressors, such as increased efficiency and new learning opportunities. This study contributes to the extension of existing technostress models by incorporating GenAI-specific factors and provides practical implications for the successful integration of GenAI in the workplace.
Keywords: ChatGPT, Generative AI, qualitative study, Technostress, Young professionals
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 03 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Högemann, Hein, Britsche and Thomas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Malte Högemann
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