Microsoft’s latest Global AI Diffusion Report shows that AI adoption continues to expand globally, although gaps between advanced and developing economies are widening. For Mexico, the findings highlight opportunities tied to infrastructure, digital skills, policy coordination, and responsible AI deployment across the public and private sectors.

 

The use of GenAI technologies reached 17.8% between the global working-age population during the first quarter of 2026, according to Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion 1Q26 Trends and Insights report. Mexico surpassed the global average with a 20.1% adoption rate, while industry leaders argue that continued growth will depend on infrastructure, talent development, and cross-sector collaboration.

“AI is an engine of economic growth,” says Miguel Pliego, Director of Public Affairs, Microsoft Mexico, during a discussion with media about the company’s latest findings. “It has the capacity to transform economies and generate wealth, but that depends on the adoption of the technology.”

Microsoft’s research argues that countries that accelerate AI adoption are better positioned to capture productivity gains, expand digital capabilities, and strengthen competitiveness. According to the report, global AI usage increased from 16.3% to 17.8% of the world’s working-age population during the quarter, while 26 economies now report adoption rates above 30%. The analysis is based on aggregated and anonymized telemetry data adjusted for population, internet penetration, and device-market differences.

For business leaders, the findings emphasize that the evolution of digital transformation strategies have moved from experimentation toward operational deployment. In terms of reputational value, the report notes that governments  are developing policies, infrastructure, and workforce programs to support the adoption of AI technologies into the general population. Many of these initiatives are being driven in collaboration with Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report Findings 

Pliego frames AI as a “general-purpose technology,” comparable to previous technological shifts such as electricity and the printing press. This definition establishes a distance between a tool that is supposed to enhance human capabilities, to an invention that could revolutionize human history.

Under this context, Pliego notes that the economic impact of AI will not be determined just by technological availability, but by how effectively countries build the conditions necessary for adoption. Those conditions include data center infrastructure, electricity availability, internet connectivity, digital literacy, workforce training, and access to AI applications and models. 

Microsoft’s AI Diffusion Report identifies a growing divide between developed and developing economies. During the first quarter of 2026, AI adoption in the Global North reached 27.5%, compared with 15.4% in the Global South. The gap expanded to 12.1 percentage points, up from 10.6 percentage points in the second half of 2025. Microsoft attributes this difference primarily to disparities in electricity access, internet connectivity, and digital skills.

Mexico recorded an AI adoption rate of 20.1%, up from 17.8% in the second half of 2025. The country ranked 56th among 147 economies included in the study, placing it above the global average and countries like Russia and China, but below several regional peers, including Costa Rica, which reached 28.5%, and Colombia, which reached 24.5%. 

According to Pliego, Mexico’s progress reflects a combination of factors rather than a single driver. These include digital infrastructure development, collaboration between industry and government, workforce training initiatives, and increasing integration with international technology ecosystems.

Microsoft highlights ongoing participation in AI training programs and bilateral initiatives involving Mexico and the United States. The company also points to collaboration with federal authorities on workforce development and public policy discussions related to AI governance and data protection.

The report also explains that AI-assisted coding tools are producing measurable productivity gains. Microsoft reports that global GitHub code uploads increased 78% year over year during the first quarter of 2026. New repositories increased 45%, while AI-assisted development workflows expanded significantly through coding agents and automation tools.

The report associates this growth with advances from platforms such as GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, and Anthropic Claude Code. Rather than functioning solely as code-completion assistants, these systems increasingly support broader software engineering workflows, including testing, debugging, project management, and autonomous task execution.

Is AI Creating New Jobs?

Microsoft suggests that higher developer productivity is not necessarily reducing demand for software professionals. According to the report, software developer employment in the United States reached about 2.2 million in 2025, representing an 8.5% year-over-year increase. Early 2026 data indicate employment remained about 4% higher than the previous year.

Beyond software development, the report identifies “support of local languages and multimodal interaction” as an emerging component to amplify the adoption of AI models and solutions. This is the capability of chatbots to understand, generate, and process regional dialects, idioms, and languages beyond the one they used to develop originally.

“Improvements in non-English language performance have made AI tools increasingly capable of handling multilingual tasks, making them more accessible for everyday use cases such as messaging, search, learning, and content creation,” reads Microsoft report.

For Mexico and other Spanish-speaking markets, the findings reinforce the importance to consider new-demanded positions like Prompt Engineers or AI Data Trainers. These capabilities are becoming increasingly relevant in areas such as customer service, knowledge management, content generation, software development, and business operations.

The report explains that AI adoption continues to accelerate globally, but that its economic benefits remain unevenly distributed. Countries with stronger foundations in connectivity, electricity access, digital literacy, and workforce development are adopting AI at a faster pace.