Consumer AI Adoption — Global, US, and EU (2023–2026)

By February 2026, 44% of US adults had used ChatGPT — up from 34% a year earlier and more than double the 18% recorded in the summer of 2023, according to Pew Research Center. The 2023–2025 doubling was the sharpest signal in this dataset, moving the technology from early-majority trial to a level where roughly one in three American adults had direct personal experience with it in about 20 months. Growth from 2025 to 2026 continued but at a slower marginal pace — 10 additional percentage points in one year, versus the prior period's doubling. For context, Pew estimates smartphone ownership took roughly three times as long to reach comparable penetration levels.

Before reading further, note a critical methodological point. The three series in this page use different definitions and should not be treated as interchangeable. Pew Research Center asks whether US adults have ever used ChatGPT specifically — a brand-level, lifetime-use question. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report asks whether respondents across roughly 30 countries have ever used any standalone generative AI system, a broader definition. Eurostat asks EU individuals aged 16–74 whether they used generative AI tools in the past 12 months — a recency-bounded question. These distinctions are material: a person who uses only Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini would be counted by Reuters and Eurostat but not by Pew. A person who tried ChatGPT once two years ago counts in Pew's lifetime-use figure but may not meet Eurostat's past-year threshold. The chart plots these series together to show the overall trajectory of consumer AI diffusion; the levels are not directly comparable.

The Reuters Institute's 2025 report, drawn from surveys conducted in January and February 2025 across approximately 30 countries, recorded a global pooled figure of 61% who had ever used a standalone generative AI system — up from 40% in its January–February 2024 survey. That 21-percentage-point increase in 12 months is the largest single-year jump in the Reuters Institute's tracking of any digital technology category. The sample skews toward higher-income countries with strong internet penetration, which is a limitation of panel-based cross-national surveys, but even with that caveat the directional signal is clear.

Reuters Institute data shows that among adults aged 18–24, 59% were using a standalone generative AI system at least weekly by early 2025 — a rate that suggests trial has largely converted to habitual use in that cohort. Among adults aged 55 and over, the weekly-use rate was 20%, indicating a larger and persistent gap between those who have tried the technology and those who use it regularly.

Eurostat's 2025 reading — the first year its harmonised household ICT survey included a specific question on generative AI tool usage — showed 32.7% of EU individuals aged 16–74 used such tools in the past year. The EU-wide figure masks wide cross-country variation: Denmark leads at 48.4%, followed by Estonia at 46.6% and Malta at 46.5%. Romania records 17.8% and Italy 19.9%, placing them roughly 30 percentage points below the leaders. This dispersion is consistent with broader EU digital economy indicators and reflects differences in infrastructure quality, language-model availability in local languages, and the sectoral composition of each economy.

The demographic gradient within the United States, as documented by Pew, remains pronounced but is narrowing. In the February 2026 survey, adults 18–29 report a 61% usage rate versus 19% among those aged 65 and over — a 42-point gap, down from 48 points a year earlier, as older adults' usage nearly doubled while under-30 usage grew only marginally. Pew's most recent published education breakdown, from the February–March 2025 wave, showed postgraduate degree holders at 52% usage versus 18% for those with a high school diploma or less. These gaps are comparable in magnitude to the early-adoption divides recorded for other major consumer technologies, but they have persisted further into the diffusion curve than those historical precedents might suggest — three years after ChatGPT's public launch, the age gap remains wide even as it closes.

Key facts about this dataset's coverage and scope:

• US series (Pew): Four confirmed data points — May 2023 (14%), approximately August 2023 (~18%), February–March 2025 (34%), and February 2026 (44%). A Q3 2024 estimate of approximately 24% is included as an interpolated intermediate point, consistent with the Pew report's note that adoption roughly doubled from summer 2023 to early 2025.
• Global series (Reuters Institute): Two confirmed annual snapshots — Q1 2024 (40%) and Q1 2025 (61%). Pooled across approximately 30 countries using online panels; sample skews toward higher-income, higher-internet-penetration markets.
• EU series (Eurostat): One confirmed data point — 2025 (32.7%). The generative AI question is new in this survey cycle; no prior-year comparison from Eurostat is available.
• Definitions differ across all three series — see the Q&A section and the methodology note above for full disclosure.

For strategy and investment teams, the most practical framing of this data is not the absolute adoption level — which is contested by definitional differences — but the rate of change and the demographic structure of who is adopting. The Pew growth from 2023 to 2026 among US adults under 30 (from roughly 33% to 61%, with almost all of that gain arriving by early 2025) suggests the sub-30 cohort is approaching saturation on the brand-level trial question, while the 65-and-over cohort's jump from 10% to 19% in a single year (2025–2026) indicates the slower-adopting cohorts are now catching up rather than plateauing. Whether that catch-up continues or represents a one-year acceleration is not yet resolvable from two annual readings.