AI User Share: Costa Rica (Microsoft AI Diffusion)

## What this measures

The share of people aged 15 to 64 in Costa Rica who used a generative AI product during each reporting period, in percent, from Microsoft's AI Diffusion Report. Microsoft estimates it from aggregated, anonymized telemetry of its own products, adjusted for differences in operating system and device market share, internet use and population. Periods so far: H1 2025, H2 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026; each point is dated the period's last day.

## Why it matters

How fast people take up generative AI is the first step to any productivity gain from it, and the gap between countries is one of the main questions about who benefits. Microsoft's estimate compares usage across many countries on one basis.

## How to read it

Higher means a larger share of the working-age population used AI at least once in the period. The first two periods are half-years (H1 2025, H2 2025) and the later ones quarters, so a step from a half-year to a quarter can mix a change in usage with the change in window length. In Q2 2026 the United Arab Emirates had the highest share in the file. Compare economies in the same period.

## What it does not say

It counts people who used AI at all in the period, not how often, for what, or how well. It is a modelled estimate built from Microsoft telemetry, so it depends on Microsoft's share of devices in each country and on Microsoft's adjustments; it is not a survey. Microsoft refines the method and restates earlier periods with each release, and the report notes that AI reached indirectly (through an app or coding tool that calls a model) is hard to capture this way. It is not an official statistic.

## Source

Microsoft AI Economy Institute, AI Diffusion Report, Q2 2026 update: https://github.com/microsoft/ai-diffusion-report/blob/main/data/AI_Diffusion_Q22026_Update.csv (the data file published with the report). Method: Misra, A., Wang, J., McCullers, S., White, K., & Lavista Ferres, J. (2025). Measuring AI Diffusion: A Population-Normalized Metric for Tracking Global AI Usage. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.02781 Licence: the repository is published under the MIT License (https://github.com/microsoft/ai-diffusion-report/blob/main/LICENSE.md), "Copyright (c) [2026] [Microsoft]", which permits use, copying, publication and distribution, including commercially, with the copyright and permission notice. Palanor stores the figures as published; no change.