South Korea ranks 12th globally in generative AI adoption

Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute has released its ‘AI Diffusion Report: Q2 2026 Trends and Insights,’ revealing a global rise in generative AI usage. The proportion of the working-age population using generative AI rose from 17.8% in Q1 to 18.8% in Q2 2026.

South Korea showed significant growth, with its AI user base increasing by 3.5 percentage points to 40.6%, moving it to 12th place globally. South Korea has recorded the largest increase among major economies for three consecutive quarters. Leading the world in adoption are the United Arab Emirates (73.3%) and Singapore (64.3%), followed by Ireland (49.9%) and France (49.6%).

The report highlights a widening gap between the ‘Global North’ (28.8% usage) and the ‘Global South’ (16.2% usage). Usage patterns also differ by region: users in the Global South utilize AI more frequently for self-directed learning, skill development, and academic support, whereas the Global North shows higher usage for consumer-centric tasks like shopping and search.

Furthermore, open weight models are gaining traction, accounting for 75% of total token usage on the OpenRouter platform. The report notes that the performance gap between open weight and closed models is narrowing. Additionally, AI application development is surging, with Hugging Face Spaces growing from approximately 124,000 in late 2023 to roughly 1.46 million by late August 2026.