AI adoption is growing worldwide, but regional gaps are widening

Today we published our latest Global AI Diffusion Report. Global AI diffusion continued to climb in the second quarter of 2026. In June, AI usage was 18.8% of the working-age population worldwide, an increase of about 1% from the first quarter of this year. Growth was broad-based: almost every economy saw increased usage.

Notably, the UAE (73.3%) and Singapore (64.3%) continue to top the leaderboard. South Korea again saw the largest absolute change, with an increase of 3.5 percentage points. Saudi Arabia climbed five places from 30th to 25th, the largest rise in the rankings. Japan recorded the largest relative change, growing by 2.2 percentage points, or roughly 10% relative to its Q1 usage of 22.5%. Worldwide, the quarter brought a continued widening of the AI gap between the Global North and South, with usage now at 28.8% in the North and 16.2% in the South.

To track all these trends, we continue to measure AI diffusion as the share of people worldwide ages of 15 and 64 who have used a generative AI product during the reported period. This measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry data and is adjusted to reflect differences in operating system and device market share, internet penetration, and population. Additional details on the methodology are available in our AI Diffusion technical paper.

No single metric is perfect, and this one is no exception. Through the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, we continue to refine how we measure AI diffusion globally, including how adoption varies across countries in ways that best advance priorities such as scientific discovery and productivity gains. For this report, we rely on the strongest cross-country measure available today. Over the past year, there has been a significant rise in new AI tools and models. For our next report, we will expand our measure to include usage of these new tools and expect this update to increase AI user share across almost all economies, with larger projected increases in China.

In addition to our comparison of AI diffusion between the Global North and the Global South, we also find important differences in how AI is being used. Using consumer Microsoft Copilot usage insights, we examined these differences. The most notable difference is a higher share of education and learning use in the Global South.

This report also includes a substantive discussion of open-weight AI models. Open-weight AI model use is increasingly visible through application programming interface (API) usage of AI, where open models have captured a growing share of token volume. This shift could especially benefit the Global South by lowering access costs and enabling adaptation to local languages and needs, although barriers such as infrastructure, connectivity, and skills remain.

Download the latest Global AI Diffusion report and explore the data here.