Bangladesh ranks fourth from the bottom among 37 countries surveyed for public awareness and use of artificial intelligence (AI), ahead of only Malawi, Afghanistan and Comoros.
Nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis, or 64.2% of the population, have never heard of artificial intelligence (AI), while only 10.1% have used the technology, according to a Gallup-Microsoft survey.
Gallup and Microsoft are conducting the survey across 140 countries, with findings from the first phase, covering 37 countries including Bangladesh, published on Gallup’s website on 22 September.
In Bangladesh, 1,000 people aged 15 and above participated in the survey. Their responses were collected between April and July through face-to-face and telephone interviews, as well as online surveys, using random sampling.
AI awareness and usage remain low
The survey assessed public engagement with AI by asking respondents whether they had heard of the technology, ever used it and how frequently they used it.
In Bangladesh, 64.2% said they had never heard of AI, while 25.7% were aware of it but had never used it. Only 10.1% had tried the technology at least once.
Of the respondents, 1.8% said they used AI daily, 3.4% at least once a week and 4.9% once a month or less.
Bangladesh recorded the second-lowest rate of daily AI usage among the 37 countries surveyed, ahead of only Malawi, where the rate was 1%.
Bangladesh trails other developing countries
Singapore recorded the highest daily AI usage rate, with 46% of its population using the technology every day. Another 16.3% used it weekly and 16.8% monthly, while only 3.6% had never heard of AI.
The United States and New Zealand had the highest AI awareness rates, at 98% each. Several developing economies also reported substantially higher AI adoption than Bangladesh.
At least 20% of people in Nigeria had used AI, compared with 22% in Egypt, 23% in Kenya, 26% in Ghana, 29% in Indonesia and 43% in Vietnam.
Among the three countries ranked below Bangladesh, 2.8% of people in Malawi had used AI at least once, compared with 8% in Afghanistan and 8.7% in Comoros.
However, the differences between Bangladesh and Afghanistan and Comoros fall within the survey’s margin of error of 2.2 to 4.9 percentage points, suggesting that actual AI adoption rates in the three countries could be similar.
Microsoft’s estimates show a similar trend
A separate assessment by Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute also points to low AI adoption in Bangladesh.
The institute publishes quarterly estimates of AI usage across countries, drawing on data from Microsoft’s products and adjusting for population size and internet penetration, rather than public opinion surveys.
Its latest report, published on 21 September, estimated that 8% of Bangladeshis aged 15-64 used generative AI between April and June this year.
The global generative AI adoption rate stood at 18.8%, with 127 of the 147 countries covered by the report recording higher rates than Bangladesh.
In South Asia, adoption stood at 18.5% in India, 14.6% in Nepal and 11.9% in Pakistan. Bangladesh’s rate was slightly higher than Sri Lanka’s 7.6% and Afghanistan’s 6.3%.
Although the Gallup survey and Microsoft’s estimates use different methodologies and cover different age groups, both put AI adoption in Bangladesh at around 10%.
Internet access remains a challenge
Internet access is a basic requirement for using AI, yet a significant share of households in Bangladesh still have no internet user.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ (BBS) ICT Access and Use Survey, conducted between July and September last year, more than 56% of households had at least one internet user.
This means around four in every 10 households had no internet user. The share of households with at least one internet user was 64% in urban areas, compared with 51.5% in rural areas.
Digital skills among internet users also remain limited. The BBS’s 2024-25 survey found that only 15% of respondents could transfer files, while searching for government job circulars was the most common reason for using the internet.
Gallup’s survey did not examine why people in Bangladesh were not using AI. However, with more than 40% of households still having no internet user, the widespread lack of familiarity with the technology is hardly surprising.
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