Microsoft report: AI adoption gap widens as global usage hits 17.8%

Microsoft's latest Global AI Diffusion report, published by the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, shows generative AI use among the world's working-age population rose from 16.3% to 17.8% in Q1 2026. The UAE remains the top adopter at 70.1%, with Singapore (63.4%), Norway (48.6%), Ireland (48.4%), and France (47.8%) rounding out the top five. The United States climbed to 21st place at 31.3%, while the UK ranked eighth at 42.2%. However, Microsoft warns that the gap between the Global North and Global South is widening. In Q1, 27.5% of the Global North used AI versus 15.4% in the Global South—a 12.1-percentage-point difference, up from 10.6 points in late 2025. Microsoft attributes this to differences in reliable electricity, internet connectivity, and digital skills, making AI adoption an education and workforce issue beyond tool availability.

Asia recorded some of the fastest adoption growth, with 12 of the 15 fastest-growing economies since mid-2025 located there. South Korea led with a 43.2% increase in AI users, followed by Thailand (36.4%) and Japan (34.1%). Japan's ranking improved from 56th to 48th, driven by better non-English language performance—GPT-4o now scores ~80% on Japanese MMLU benchmarks versus ~50% on GPT-3.5 Turbo. Microsoft also highlights a surge in AI-assisted software development: global Git pushes increased 78% year over year, new repositories grew 45%, and merged pull requests associated with AI coding agents expanded more than 28x since June 2025. GitHub Copilot has evolved from a code suggestion tool into a platform supporting multiple models, coding agents, and project management integrations, reshaping developer workflows worldwide.