AI Publications

🔗https://shre.ink/Microsoft-Global-AI-Adoption-2025

1. Executive Summary

In H2 2025, Microsoft estimates global “AI diffusion” (share of people using a gen-AI product) rose +1.2pp to 16.3% worldwide—about one in six people. Growth continues, but it’s not evenly distributed: adoption in the Global North reached 24.7% of working-age people, versus 14.1% in the Global South, widening the gap (from 9.8pp to 10.6pp).

The report argues the divide reflects differences in infrastructure, policy execution, skills, and product access. High-income countries keep accelerating, while many lower-income markets progress more slowly unless access barriers are reduced (e.g., via free tools or open-source distribution).

2. Changes in the second half of 2025

H2 2025 shows record usage growth, but the composition of that growth matters: all top 10 countries by adoption increase are high-income economies. This indicates that the “easy acceleration” is happening where citizens already have strong digital habits and where institutions can integrate AI into work and services quickly.

Rankings among the top 30 are relatively stable, meaning the leading group is hard to dislodge. Still, there are notable movements—especially South Korea moving sharply upward in the table—suggesting that targeted changes (policy + capability + culture) can still shift adoption within months.

3. South Korea’s AI Surge: Policy, Models, and a Viral Cultural Moment

South Korea is the standout surge story in H2. Microsoft reports that usage climbed from roughly the mid-20s to >30% within about three months, and the increase since Oct 2024 is described as >80%—far above global average growth.

The report explains this as a flywheel: (1) policy and governance moved into execution mode, (2) Korean-language performance in frontier models improved sharply, and (3) an accessible, highly shareable consumer moment helped convert awareness into first-time use.

• National Policies Accelerating AI Integration: On the policy side, South Korea restructured national coordination by creating the National AI Strategy Committee and enacted the AI Basic Act in 2025. The report positions this as a shift from broad ambition to “operational governance”: clearer roles, cross-ministry coordination, and a framework that supports scaling AI across the economy. Microsoft’s broader implication is that policy matters most when it reduces friction—setting rules, funding capacity, and enabling public-sector adoption—so that AI becomes embedded in daily services and work, not just a private consumer tool.

• Frontier Model Improvements for the Korean Language: A core driver of Korea’s adoption was improved Korean-language capability in frontier models. The report uses the Korean CSAT benchmark to illustrate step-change progress: GPT-3.5 scored 16, GPT-4o reached 75, and GPT-5 achieved 100 on the leaderboard they cite. This matters because language quality is not cosmetic—it determines whether AI is usable for real tasks (school, work, government forms, customer support, drafting, reasoning). When model performance crosses a usability threshold in a local language, adoption can jump quickly because the tool finally “fits” everyday life.

• A Viral Image-Generation Moment That Captured Public Imagination: The report points to a “viral moment” in April 2025: Ghibli-style image generation with ChatGPT-4o spread rapidly across Korean social platforms. The critical factor was accessibility: people could participate instantly, with no technical learning curve—just prompts and shareable outputs. Microsoft’s interpretation is that viral features can act like a mass onboarding funnel. They don’t replace structural drivers like policy and language performance, but they can dramatically accelerate first-time experimentation—especially when the product experience is simple and culturally resonant.

  
  

4. The UAE’s Deliberate AI Strategy

The UAE remains the global leader in adoption, with working-age usage at 64.0% (up from 59.4%), and Singapore close behind at 60.9%. The report frames the UAE’s position as the outcome of a long-running national plan: early ministerial leadership (from 2017) and a strategy spanning multiple priority sectors.

A second pillar is trust and regulatory pragmatism—testing and scaling via sandboxes and talent-attraction policies. Microsoft links this to public sentiment using an Edelman trust comparison they cite (UAE markedly higher than the U.S.), implying that legitimacy and clear governance can speed adoption at population scale.

5. DeepSeek’s Dramatic Rise: Open-Source AI Gains Ground in New Markets

DeepSeek’s rise is presented as a diffusion story driven by access and openness. The report notes that DeepSeek released model weights under an MIT License and paired it with a free chatbot across web and mobile—removing both cost and deployment barriers.

Adoption concentrates where other services are less accessible: Microsoft highlights stronger DeepSeek uptake in regions affected by restrictions and in underserved markets, and estimates usage in Africa at 2–4× other regions.

The broader takeaway is that open-source and free distribution can rapidly expand AI reach—but also shifts the global competitive landscape by creating alternative “AI supply lines” outside incumbent ecosystems.