AI Adoption Rankings: Where Does France Stand Globally?

Globally, about one in six adults now uses generative AI tools, as revealed in the AI Diffusion Report 2025 published by Microsoft on Thursday, January 8, 2025. The study assesses the percentage of the population that has used a generative AI product during the second half of 2025, drawing on “aggregated and anonymized” telemetry data from the company.

France Leads, While the US Falls Behind

The global adoption rate of artificial intelligence continued to rise in the second half of 2025, announces the Microsoft AI Economy Institute, the think tank responsible for the study. Worldwide, 16.3% of working-age individuals have used a generative AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot at least once during this period, up from 15.1% in the first half (a 1.2% increase).

France is among the countries where the adoption of generative AI is most pronounced, even recording the third highest growth in the second half of the year (+3.1%). According to Microsoft, 44% of French adults used AI at least once during the latter half of the year, up from 40.9% in the first half. Despite this, France is still ranked fifth, trailing behind the United Arab Emirates (64%), Singapore (60.9%), Norway (46.4%), and Ireland (44.6%).

Countries that invested early in digital infrastructures, AI training, and government adoption continue to lead the race, Microsoft analyzes.

Surprisingly, the United States, despite being a leader in AI infrastructure and innovation, ranks only 24th with 28.3% of adults using the technology during the period. “A smaller proportion of the American population uses AI compared to several smaller, highly digitized nations,” Microsoft notes. The most significant progress was seen in South Korea, which jumped 7 places to 18th position, with an increase of 4.8%.

DeepSeek Dominates Markets “Underserved” by OpenAI or Google

If the gap in AI adoption between the Northern and Southern hemispheres is widening, the rise of DeepSeek could mitigate this trend, observes Microsoft. Launched in January 2025, the Chinese conversational agent has partially removed financial and technical barriers that limited access to this technology. Being free and open source, it has captured “markets long underserved by traditional providers,” according to the report.

While it has been massively adopted in China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and Belarus, unsurprisingly, it is also gaining popularity in Africa, Microsoft points out, thanks to “strategic promotion and partnerships with companies like Huawei.” “This rapid evolution underlines an increasingly important dimension of the AI competition between the United States and China, involving a race to promote the adoption of their respective national models,” the firm adds.