(Image credit: Getty Images) Employees everywhere are quietly using AI at work. And while a recent study shows that more than half of U.S. companies encourage it, a new report highlighted by the Japanese tech publication TechTarget Japan warns that “Shadow AI” is becoming one of the fastest-growing problems inside modern workplaces. The issue is, employees aren't using official company-approved AI or even AI-proofed workflows. The term "Shadow AI" might sound familiar because it mirrors the old “Shadow IT” era when employees quietly downloaded unauthorized apps and cloud software to get work done faster. Except with AI, the stakes are much higher. Instead of sneaking Slack alternatives or Dropbox accounts into the office, workers are now pasting confidential documents, meeting notes, internal strategy plans, financial data, customer information and source code directly into AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT , Google Gemini and other generative AI tools.…