Global AI Adoption Rises, But Unevenly
AI adoption is growing worldwide, but not evenly. Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report shows that the share of the working-age population using generative AI rose by 1.5 percentage points in the first quarter, from 16.3% to 17.8%. Twenty-six economies now have more than 30% of their working-age population using AI, signaling a market that is moving past early experimentation into mainstream use. Leaders include the UAE, where diffusion has reached 70.1% of the working-age population, and other high-usage economies such as Singapore, Norway, Ireland, and France. The report defines AI diffusion as the share of people aged 15 to 64 who used a generative AI product in the period, drawing on anonymized Microsoft telemetry. While this single metric cannot capture every form of AI activity, it offers one of the clearest cross-country snapshots of how rapidly generative AI usage is spreading.
Global North-South Divide Deepens
Beneath the headline growth figures lies a widening AI adoption gap between the Global North and Global South. Microsoft’s data shows usage in the Global North reaching 27.5% of the working-age population, up from 24.7% in the second half of the previous year. In the Global South, usage rose more slowly, from 14.1% to 15.4%. That shift pushed the AI adoption gap from 10.6 to 12.1 percentage points. The AI adoption gap is not just about access to tools; Microsoft links the divide to disparities in reliable electricity, internet connectivity, and digital skills. These global AI disparities mean that generative AI usage is increasingly concentrated in economies with stronger infrastructure and human capital. As a result, AI skills shortages in lower-resourced regions risk becoming a structural drag on productivity and competitiveness, even as AI capabilities themselves become more accessible and multilingual.
Asia’s Language-Led Leap and the Skills Question
While the Global South lags overall, parts of Asia are accelerating quickly as AI tools improve support for local languages and multimodal interaction. According to Microsoft, 12 of the 15 fastest-growing economies for AI adoption since mid-2025 are in Asia, with South Korea, Thailand, and Japan recording some of the largest gains. South Korea’s AI user share rose by 43.2% compared with the second half of 2025, Thailand by 36.4%, and Japan by 34.1%. These jumps underscore how language support and user experience can unlock pent-up demand for generative AI usage, even where broader infrastructure constraints remain. At the same time, they highlight a new dimension of the AI skills shortage: workers and organizations must not only access AI tools but also learn to use them effectively in their own linguistic and cultural contexts. Regions that bridge this skills gap fastest will be best positioned to convert adoption into real economic gains.
Small and Midsize Businesses Race Ahead in Mature Markets
In contrast to the patchy global picture, small and midsize businesses in mature markets are embracing AI at speed. Intuit’s 2026 AI Impact Report, based on survey responses from more than 34,000 small and midsize businesses and anonymized data from over 5.3 million firms in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, finds that roughly seven in ten businesses across these countries now use AI regularly. In the US alone, 77% of small and midsize businesses report regular AI use, up from 48% in mid-2024. The benefits appear tangible: 78% of US businesses say AI has improved productivity, 43% report revenue gains, and four times as many say AI has increased hiring rather than reduced it. Adoption is highest in marketing, administration, and customer service, while remaining lower in areas where human judgment is critical, reflecting a pragmatic approach to deployment.
Barriers, Business Profiles and the Competitive Stakes
Even where AI tools are widely available, the barriers to adoption differ sharply by geography and business size, shaping competitive outcomes. For small and midsize firms in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, the biggest obstacles are not cost but concerns about privacy and security, fear of errors, and uncertainty about what AI can actually do. The Intuit data suggests that businesses paying for AI tend to share a specific profile: they are younger, growth-focused, and operate in digital-first industries. Once they commit, they rarely turn back; around eight in ten businesses that paid for AI in 2024 were still paying in 2025. In contrast, organizations in regions facing infrastructure gaps or weaker digital skills must overcome far more fundamental hurdles. As AI adoption deepens, these differing constraints risk hardening into long-term global AI disparities, with early movers consolidating advantages in productivity, innovation, and market share.
