By Microsoft Corporate Blogs
Publication Date: 2026-01-08 13:05:00
Global adoption of artificial intelligence continued to increase in the second half of 2025, increasing by 1.2 percentage points compared to the first half of 2025, with approximately one in six people worldwide now using generative AI tools – a remarkable advance for a technology that has only recently entered mainstream use.
To track this trend, we measure AI penetration as the proportion of people worldwide who used a generative AI product during the reporting period. This measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry data and then adjusted to reflect differences in operating system and device market share, Internet penetration, and country population. For more details on the methodology, see our AI Diffusion technical document.(1)
No single metric is perfect, and this one is no exception. Through the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, we continue to refine the way we measure the global adoption of AI, including how adoption varies across countries, to best make progress…
