Microsoft's Global AI Diffusion Report flags widening North-South AI usage gap

Microsoft has published its latest Global AI Diffusion Report, announced in a post on its own blog. The report finds that worldwide AI usage reached 18.8 percent of the working-age population in June, roughly one percentage point above the first quarter of 2026, with almost every economy recording growth. Microsoft measures diffusion as the proportion of people aged 15 to 64 who used any generative AI product in the period, using aggregated, anonymized telemetry and weighted to reflect device and operating system share, who is online, and population size.

The UAE (73.3 percent) and Singapore (64.3 percent) remain at the top of the rankings. South Korea posted the largest absolute gain, at 3.5 percentage points, while Japan had the biggest relative change, up 2.2 points from a first-quarter level of 22.5 percent. Saudi Arabia gained five places in the ranking, going from 30th to 25th. The gap between the Global North and South continued to widen, with usage at 28.8 percent in the North and 16.2 percent in the South.

Microsoft acknowledges that no single metric is perfect, and says the Microsoft AI Economy Institute continues refining its measure. The next report will take account of newer tools and models, which it expects to lift usage shares in almost every economy, with larger projected increases in China. Using consumer Copilot data, the report also finds that education and learning make up a bigger portion of use in the Global South. It discusses open-weight models, whose share of API token volume is growing; this could lower costs and allow adaptation to local languages in the Global South, though infrastructure, connectivity and skills barriers remain.