Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely seen as having the potential to revolutionise education by making it more efficient, personalised and accessible. Still, its use in education raises significant ethical, legal and societal concerns. For vocational educators, AI is particularly important both as forming its subject and as a means of delivering VET. However, there are still many challenges, related to infrastructure, lack of reliability or pedagogical relevance, and teachers must be supported in learning to use AI in a meaningful and effective way. To design effective professional development programmes, it is vital to explore and understand teachers’ prior knowledge, attitudes and current practices related to AI. This paper presents the outcomes of such an explorative study, based on a survey of Hungarian VET educators (N = 599). Our results suggest that respondents have a strong interest in employing AI in their teaching, but they generally lack AI competences and have some concerns. Most felt they knew relatively little of the use of AI in both the vocation they taught and education, and many have never used any AI-based educational tools. They saw the benefits of AI in the facilitation of teacher preparation and planning, more varied lessons and increased learner motivation, but perceived students’ over-reliance on AI, plagiarism and a reduction of critical thinking, creativity and communication skills as serious risks. While our study generally confirms prior research findings in a new context, it also identifies demographic and VET-specific factors that may explain differences in VET educators’ perceptions and practices.