Generative AI in User Experience Design and Research: How Do UX Practitioners, Teams, and Companies Use GenAI in Industry?

User Experience (UX) practitioners, like UX designers and researchers, have begun to adopt Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools into their work practices. However, we lack an understanding of how UX practitioners, UX teams, and companies actually utilize GenAI and what challenges they face. We conducted interviews with 24 UX practitioners from multiple companies and countries, with varying roles and seniority. Our findings include: 1) There is a significant lack of GenAI company policies, with companies informally advising caution or leaving the responsibility to individual employees; 2) UX teams lack team-wide GenAI practices. UX practitioners typically use GenAI individually, favoring writing-based tasks, but note limitations for design-focused activities, like wireframing and prototyping; 3) UX practitioners call for better training on GenAI to enhance their abilities to generate effective prompts and evaluate output quality. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for GenAI integration in the UX sector.