microsoft reports an increase in global power generation A.I. It is expected to be in use during the first quarter of 2026, but warns that adoption is being spread unevenly across regions.
The company’s latest Global AI Adoption Report, published by the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, found that AI usage among the world’s working-age population increased from 16.3 percent to 17.8 percent in the first quarter. This report measures AI adoption as the percentage of people aged 15 to 64 who used a generated AI product during the reporting period.
The numbers show that the market is moving beyond early experiments, but not at the same pace everywhere. According to Microsoft, 26 economies now have more than 30% of the working-age population using AI, while the gap between the Global North and Global South continues to widen.
The UAE continues to top Microsoft’s National AI Leaderboard, with AI usage reaching 70.1% of the working-age population. Singapore followed with 63.4%, ahead of Norway with 48.6%, Ireland with 48.4% and France with 47.8%.
The United States moved up from 24th to 21st place with a usage rate of 31.3 percent. The UK came in 8th place with AI usage reaching 42.2%.
AI adoption gap continues to widen
According to Microsoft data, AI adoption in the Global North is growing more than twice as fast as the Global South.
In Q1 2026, 27.5 percent of the population in the Global North was using generative AI, up from 24.7 percent in H2 2025. Utilization rates among the Global South population ranged from 14.1 percent to 15.4 percent.
This widened the gap between the two groups from 10.6 percentage points to 12.1 percentage points.
Microsoft links this disparity to differences in reliable electricity, internet connectivity, and digital skills. AI adoption is therefore not just a matter of tool availability, but a broader education and workforce issue.
The report also notes that its measurements are not a perfect proxy for all AI activity. Microsoft said the data comes from aggregated and anonymized telemetry and is adjusted for operating system and device market share, internet penetration, and population.
AI advances in local languages accelerate Asia
Asia recorded the highest growth in the quarter. According to Microsoft, 12 of the 15 countries with the fastest growth in AI adoption since June 2025 are in Asia, with the largest increases in South Korea, Thailand, and Japan.
Korea’s AI user share increased by 43.2% compared to 1H 2025. Thailand increased by 36.4% and Japan by 34.1%.
Microsoft says improved support for local languages and multimodal interactions appears to be driving broader adoption. The report notes improved performance in languages other than English across tasks such as messaging, search, learning, and content creation.
Japan’s ranking rose from 56th in the first half of 2025 to 48th in the first quarter of 2026. Japan’s adoption rate increased by 3.4 percentage points in the quarter, more than three times the global average.
According to the report, Japan’s performance on professional exams has improved from about 50.8 percent accuracy with previous models to more than 90 percent with the latest system. On the MMLU benchmark, Japan’s accuracy increased from about 50% for GPT-3.5 Turbo to about 80% for GPT-4o.
AI coding tools drive software activity
Microsoft also noted a surge in software development activity related to AI coding tools from Anthropic, OpenAI, and GitHub Copilot.
Git pushes, where developers publish their coding changes online, grew 78% year-over-year worldwide. New Git repositories increased by 45% compared to the first quarter of 2025.
According to the report, GitHub Copilot has transitioned from a code suggestion tool to a broader AI coding platform with support for multiple models, coding agents, command line usage, and integration with collaboration and project management tools.
Integrated GitHub pull requests related to AI coding agents have increased more than 28x since June 2025. Microsoft says it provides a proxy for extending AI-assisted coding workflows, even though this is just one part of the overall AI-enhanced development activity.
The impact on the labor market remains unresolved. According to Microsoft, the total number of software developer jobs in the United States will reach approximately 2.2 million in 2025, an 8.5% increase from the previous year. Software developer employment in March 2026 was approximately 4% higher than in March 2025, according to data from the first half of the first quarter of 2026.
Microsoft’s Q1 numbers show that the use of AI is increasing across work, coding, learning, and everyday digital activities, while gaps in infrastructure remain visible. The next question is whether accelerated adoption in high-income countries and digitally mature economies will accelerate the skills gap before lower-growth markets catch up.
