Microsoft says global generative AI use reached 18.8% in June

Microsoft says worldwide generative AI use kept climbing in the second quarter of 2026, reaching 18.8% of the working-age population in June. The figure comes from the company’s latest Global AI Diffusion Report, which uses aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry and adjusts it for device mix, internet penetration, operating system share, and population.

The company’s measure is not a census of every AI product. Microsoft says it tracks people aged 15 to 64 who used a generative AI product during the period. That matters because the report is best read as a directional view of adoption, not as a full count of every AI user on every platform.

What changed

Microsoft reported that AI usage rose by about one percentage point from the first quarter and that nearly every economy in its dataset showed growth. The highest usage rates remained concentrated in a small group of countries. The United Arab Emirates led at 73.3%, followed by Singapore at 64.3%.

The most striking movement came from Asia and the Middle East. Microsoft said South Korea posted the largest absolute gain, up 3.5 percentage points. Japan rose by 2.2 percentage points, which the company described as roughly 10% relative growth from its first-quarter level of 22.5%. Saudi Arabia climbed five places in the ranking, from 30th to 25th.

Why it matters

The report points to a wider adoption split between richer and poorer regions. Microsoft put AI usage at 28.8% in the Global North and 16.2% in the Global South. For readers making product or policy decisions, that gap is the practical headline. AI tools are spreading, but the places that could benefit from cheaper translation, tutoring, coding help, and document work are not necessarily getting equal access.

Microsoft also said Copilot usage patterns suggest education and learning make up a higher share of use in the Global South. That is useful context for schools, NGOs, and vendors. A low-cost AI service that works well on slower connections and local languages may matter more than another high-end workplace assistant aimed at already saturated markets.

What to watch next

The company said it plans to expand the measure in its next report to include usage of newer tools and models, and expects that change to raise user-share estimates across almost all economies, with larger projected increases in China. That methodological change will make quarter-to-quarter comparisons harder, so readers should watch whether the underlying gap narrows, not just whether the headline adoption number rises.

The CyberOGZ read is straightforward: adoption is no longer the only signal to watch. The important question for teams is whether AI access is turning into durable capability. Infrastructure, training, language coverage, privacy rules, and local costs will decide whether growing usage becomes productivity or just another uneven technology rollout.

Sources

• blogs.microsoft.com

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