Half of humanity uses AI

It’s important to stress that GWI’s adoption figure encompasses all AI tools and activities, including the use of AI functionality within broader software applications like Microsoft Office and Google Workplace, graphics tools like Canva and Adobe Creative Cloud, and standalone LLM platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude.

And that broader definition of AI explains why this 4 billion figure is so much higher than the 2.42 billion figure we’re reporting for the more specific use of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT (more on that in a moment).

For context, those 4.02 billion users already equate to 48.6 percent of the world’s total population, regardless of age.

However, it’s important to highlight that our 4.02 billion figure only represents the use of AI amongst people aged 16 and above.

And with other data suggesting that school-age children may be particularly avid users of AI, there’s a good chance that the total AI user figure is markedly higher than this adult total suggests.

Indeed, if just 10 percent of the world’s internet users below the age of 16 use AI – which seems highly probable given the available data – that would mean more than half of the world’s total population already uses AI.

At first, that figure might sound astonishing.

But when we consider that AI summaries are already inescapable at the top of Google search results, and that 79.3 percent of online adults use search engines each month, a global AI adoption rate in excess of 50 percent is absolutely plausible.

Western markets lag in AI use

For perspective, Japan is the only country out of the 54 geographies covered by GWI’s Core survey where fewer than half of adult respondents say that they used AI within the past month.

However, it’s particularly interesting to note that AI adoption rates across most countries in Europe and Northern America fall well below the global average.

For example, just 71.5 percent of online adults in the United States say that they used AI within the past month, which is almost 10 percentage points below the global average.

Meanwhile, AI adoption in the UK is even lower, with just 62.8 percent of GWI’s survey respondents saying that they’ve used AI within the past 30 days.

Relatively speaking, that means Britons are more than 20 percent less likely than the global average to use AI, and fewer than 2 in 3 of the country’s adult internet users have used AI within the past month.

Germany, France, and Canada also sit low in the rankings, in stark contrast to adoption rates across Asia, Africa, and Southern America.

Asia leads AI adoption

And in light of geopolitical tensions surrounding AI, it’s particularly interesting to note that 86.4 percent of online adults in China use AI today.

These figures suggest that more than 1 billion people in China already use AI technologies, and also that online adults in China are more than 20 percent more likely to use AI than their American peers.

However, Chinese internet users are not the most avid users of AI.

Kenya tops the rankings for AI use in GWI’s latest survey, with a whopping 97.5 percent of survey respondents in the country saying that they’ve used at least one AI tool within the past month.

The UAE ranks second on 94.2 percent, while Indonesia ranks third, with 93.6 percent.

Moreover, a number of Indonesia’s neighbours also place towards the top of GWI’s rankings, with AI adoption across the South-East Asia region currently sitting at an impressive 91.8 percent of all online adults.

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