Korea's AI Adoption Rate Jumps Seven Places to 18th in One Year: "Unparalleled Growth"

Microsoft Think Tank Releases 'AI Diffusion Report'
South Korea's Cumulative Growth Rate Surpasses 80%, Far Ahead of the Global Average of 35%
Improved Korean Language Model Performance and Cultural Trends Like 'Ghibli Profile Pictures' Drive Adoption

A recent study has found that South Korea's rate of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is growing faster than anywhere else in the world.

The AI Economy Institute, a think tank under Microsoft, announced on January 12 the release of its report titled "AI Diffusion Report: A Widening Digital Divide." The report analyzes the state of AI adoption and issues of digital disparity in the second half of last year.

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According to the study, South Korea recorded the highest growth among all countries surveyed in the second half of the year, climbing seven places to rank 18th overall. The AI usage rate surpassed 30% of the entire working-age population.

Globally, the pace of AI diffusion in South Korea was also among the fastest in the world. Since October 2024, South Korea's cumulative AI adoption growth rate has exceeded 80%, far outpacing the global average of 35% and the United States at 25%.

The AI Economy Institute attributed this rapid growth in South Korea to three key drivers: national policy, advancements in model performance, and widespread cultural phenomena.

On the technical front, the dramatic improvement in frontier models’ ability to process the Korean language played a pivotal role. The report highlighted that the South Korean case serves as a significant indicator that, as language capabilities in models become more sophisticated, actual usage increases proportionally. This suggests that countries with limited training data in their local languages could also see expanded AI adoption as model performance in those languages improves.

The report also found that cultural phenomena, such as the popularity of "Ghibli-style" image generation, have triggered a surge of new AI users in South Korea. These initial experiences have led not only to short-term trends but also to sustained, long-term usage.

Meanwhile, as of the second half of 2025, the global adoption rate of generative AI reached 16.3%, up 1.2 percentage points from the first half of the year. However, the gap in AI adoption rates between the Global North-comprised mainly of advanced economies-and the Global South-consisting of emerging markets-has widened.

By country, the United Arab Emirates (64.0%), Singapore (60.9%), Norway (46.4%), and Spain (41.8%)-all of which invested early in digital infrastructure-ranked at the top in terms of adoption rates. While the United States had the highest absolute usage, its per capita usage rate was relatively low, placing it 24th globally.

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