Saudi women reported substantially higher use of AI tools than men in 2025: 52.8% of female internet users versus 39.4% of male users, a 13.4-percentage-point gap in the Communications, Space and Technology Commission’s Saudi Internet Report 2025. The result is more consequential than the headline suggests. The detailed breakdown shows women’s lead is concentrated in education, translation and content creation, while men retain the lead in work-related use — a split that separates broad consumer adoption from workplace deployment.
The report covers 2025 activity but was released by Saudi Arabia’s CST on July 19, 2026. CairoScene’s August 2 report correctly highlighted the gender gap, while Saudi business publication Argaam independently reported the same 52.8% and 39.4% figures from the CST data. Overall, 45.2% of Saudi internet users said they used AI tools, which CST describes as more than double the prior year’s level.
For Windows users and IT administrators, the practical read is straightforward: consumer AI use has arrived at scale in a market with exceptionally high connectivity, but this is not yet evidence that AI use is equally embedded in managed work. Microsoft Copilot ranks fifth among the country’s most-downloaded AI applications, behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok, even as Windows accounts for 81% of computer operating systems in CST’s dashboard.
CST’s figures show a clear pattern among people who use AI tools. Women reported higher use for study and education, at 42.4% compared with 32.9% for men. They also led in image, video and presentation creation, 29.7% to 21.6%, and language translation, 26.8% to 23.4%.
The two sexes were effectively tied for information search: 80.7% of women and 80.8% of men who use AI tools reported that purpose. That near-perfect match matters because it identifies the common baseline. AI has first become a search and answer interface, rather than a specialist coding, analytics or business-process system.
Men led in only one of the reported practical categories: work-related tasks, at 20%, compared with 14.6% for women. The gap is modest in absolute terms — 5.4 percentage points — but it changes the interpretation of the wider adoption statistic. Saudi women are using AI more often overall, particularly for education and creative tasks; the published data does not show that they are ahead in employer-sanctioned or job-embedded use.
CST reports writing use at 14.3% overall and programming or technical-task use at 13.5%. Those are the least common categories listed, behind information search, idea generation, education, creative production, translation and work tasks. A country can therefore show rapid AI adoption while still having relatively limited use of the tools in technical workflows that would concern a Windows administrator, developer platform owner or security team.
The public dashboard does not provide a cross-tabulation of age, gender, occupation, education level and workplace status. It also does not publicly explain whether “AI tool use” means any use during 2025, regular use, app installation, website access, or a particular survey response threshold. Those missing details limit what can responsibly be inferred about the cause of the gender difference.
That pattern supports the education finding: young people are the most exposed to AI tools, and study is the third-largest reported use case overall, at 37.7%. But it does not prove that education alone explains women’s lead. CST has not published the demographic detail necessary to establish whether women in the sample were younger, more likely to be students, more likely to use mobile-first services, or simply more willing to classify their activities as AI-assisted.
One reporting discrepancy is worth correcting before it hardens into a repeated statistic. Middle East AI News said that AI use among 10-to-19-year-olds was 58.4%. CST’s own dashboard puts that cohort at 53.4%, not 58.4%, and Argaam’s reporting matches the official figure. The difference does not change the broader finding that young users lead adoption, but it reverses the claimed ordering: CST’s numbers place 20-to-29-year-olds first, not teenagers.
The regional figures also caution against treating “Saudi AI adoption” as a uniform national condition. Tabuk recorded the highest reported usage at 58.5%, followed by the Eastern Province at 53.8%, Al Madinah at 50.8% and Riyadh at 50.2%. Jazan was lowest at 30.7%, with Najran at 32.2% and Al Jouf at 35.1%. A nearly 28-point spread from Tabuk to Jazan is larger than the national gender gap.
The ranking should be read precisely. It measures downloads of AI applications, not active users, paid subscriptions, enterprise deployments or the volume of work completed through each service. It cannot establish that ChatGPT has more daily users than Gemini, or that Copilot has a smaller installed base in organizations with Microsoft 365 licensing.
Still, the placement is a warning against assuming that a dominant Windows desktop footprint guarantees AI preference. CST reports Windows on 81% of computers in the country, with macOS at 17% and Linux at 1.2%. Yet the AI-app ranking is led by services whose identity is tied to consumer mobile and web experiences rather than the desktop operating system. ChatGPT is also eighth among the most-visited websites in the Kingdom.
For Microsoft, that is a product-distribution problem as much as a model-quality problem. Users are discovering AI through phone app stores, browsers and search-like prompts. Copilot’s attachment to Windows, Edge, Microsoft 365 and organizational accounts can be valuable in managed environments, but those same integration points do not automatically make it the consumer’s first downloaded assistant.
That hierarchy has direct implications for IT teams. Search-oriented use is easy to begin outside formal technology procurement: a browser tab, personal smartphone app or consumer account is enough. It is also where the distinction between a public assistant and an organization-approved tool becomes operationally important. Employees who use an AI system to summarize a policy, troubleshoot an error message, rewrite an email or translate customer material may expose data long before a formal “AI project” appears on an IT roadmap.
The report offers no figures on enterprise licensing, data classification, identity integration, retention controls or adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Saudi organizations. Its results should therefore not be presented as proof of organizational AI maturity. They show a fast-growing population of AI users, many of whom are using tools for everyday search, learning and content production.
Saudi Arabia’s broader connectivity numbers explain why the transition could move quickly. Internet penetration reached 99.6%; average mobile data consumption was 53 GB per person per month; and median mobile download speed was 216 Mbps. CST says that placed the Kingdom among the top five G20 countries on that mobile-speed measure. In a market where 99.6% of people are online and 61.3% of users spend seven or more hours online daily, mobile AI services have a very large addressable base.
The immediate story is not that women have displaced men from AI use. It is that Saudi Arabia’s most visible AI divide is between everyday, user-led adoption and the smaller share of usage tied to work and technical tasks. ChatGPT’s first-place download ranking and Copilot’s fifth-place position show where consumer demand currently sits; the next meaningful measure will be whether organizations convert that demand into governed, identity-managed and data-safe AI use.
For Windows users and IT administrators, the practical read is straightforward: consumer AI use has arrived at scale in a market with exceptionally high connectivity, but this is not yet evidence that AI use is equally embedded in managed work. Microsoft Copilot ranks fifth among the country’s most-downloaded AI applications, behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok, even as Windows accounts for 81% of computer operating systems in CST’s dashboard.
The lead is in learning and creation, not office work
CST’s figures show a clear pattern among people who use AI tools. Women reported higher use for study and education, at 42.4% compared with 32.9% for men. They also led in image, video and presentation creation, 29.7% to 21.6%, and language translation, 26.8% to 23.4%.The two sexes were effectively tied for information search: 80.7% of women and 80.8% of men who use AI tools reported that purpose. That near-perfect match matters because it identifies the common baseline. AI has first become a search and answer interface, rather than a specialist coding, analytics or business-process system.
Men led in only one of the reported practical categories: work-related tasks, at 20%, compared with 14.6% for women. The gap is modest in absolute terms — 5.4 percentage points — but it changes the interpretation of the wider adoption statistic. Saudi women are using AI more often overall, particularly for education and creative tasks; the published data does not show that they are ahead in employer-sanctioned or job-embedded use.
CST reports writing use at 14.3% overall and programming or technical-task use at 13.5%. Those are the least common categories listed, behind information search, idea generation, education, creative production, translation and work tasks. A country can therefore show rapid AI adoption while still having relatively limited use of the tools in technical workflows that would concern a Windows administrator, developer platform owner or security team.
The public dashboard does not provide a cross-tabulation of age, gender, occupation, education level and workplace status. It also does not publicly explain whether “AI tool use” means any use during 2025, regular use, app installation, website access, or a particular survey response threshold. Those missing details limit what can responsibly be inferred about the cause of the gender difference.
The biggest adoption cohort is young, and one outlet got its figure wrong
Usage peaks among Saudis aged 20 to 29, where 55.7% reported using AI tools. The next-highest group is people aged 10 to 19, at 53.4%, followed by 46.2% for ages 30 to 39. It then declines to 37.8% among people aged 40 to 49, 27.4% for ages 50 to 59, and 14.8% for the 60-to-74 group.That pattern supports the education finding: young people are the most exposed to AI tools, and study is the third-largest reported use case overall, at 37.7%. But it does not prove that education alone explains women’s lead. CST has not published the demographic detail necessary to establish whether women in the sample were younger, more likely to be students, more likely to use mobile-first services, or simply more willing to classify their activities as AI-assisted.
One reporting discrepancy is worth correcting before it hardens into a repeated statistic. Middle East AI News said that AI use among 10-to-19-year-olds was 58.4%. CST’s own dashboard puts that cohort at 53.4%, not 58.4%, and Argaam’s reporting matches the official figure. The difference does not change the broader finding that young users lead adoption, but it reverses the claimed ordering: CST’s numbers place 20-to-29-year-olds first, not teenagers.
The regional figures also caution against treating “Saudi AI adoption” as a uniform national condition. Tabuk recorded the highest reported usage at 58.5%, followed by the Eastern Province at 53.8%, Al Madinah at 50.8% and Riyadh at 50.2%. Jazan was lowest at 30.7%, with Najran at 32.2% and Al Jouf at 35.1%. A nearly 28-point spread from Tabuk to Jazan is larger than the national gender gap.
ChatGPT leads, while Copilot sits behind four consumer rivals
ChatGPT was the most-downloaded AI application in Saudi Arabia during 2025, according to CST, followed by Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok and Microsoft Copilot. The remainder of the top 10 includes Meta AI, Perplexity, Manus AI, Google NotebookLM and Saudi company HUMAIN’s application.The ranking should be read precisely. It measures downloads of AI applications, not active users, paid subscriptions, enterprise deployments or the volume of work completed through each service. It cannot establish that ChatGPT has more daily users than Gemini, or that Copilot has a smaller installed base in organizations with Microsoft 365 licensing.
Still, the placement is a warning against assuming that a dominant Windows desktop footprint guarantees AI preference. CST reports Windows on 81% of computers in the country, with macOS at 17% and Linux at 1.2%. Yet the AI-app ranking is led by services whose identity is tied to consumer mobile and web experiences rather than the desktop operating system. ChatGPT is also eighth among the most-visited websites in the Kingdom.
For Microsoft, that is a product-distribution problem as much as a model-quality problem. Users are discovering AI through phone app stores, browsers and search-like prompts. Copilot’s attachment to Windows, Edge, Microsoft 365 and organizational accounts can be valuable in managed environments, but those same integration points do not automatically make it the consumer’s first downloaded assistant.
Search is the habit; governance is the unfinished work
Information search dominates every other listed AI use case at 80.8%. Idea generation follows at 40.1%, then study and education at 37.7%. Creation of images, video or presentations reaches 25.7%, and translation is at 25.1%.That hierarchy has direct implications for IT teams. Search-oriented use is easy to begin outside formal technology procurement: a browser tab, personal smartphone app or consumer account is enough. It is also where the distinction between a public assistant and an organization-approved tool becomes operationally important. Employees who use an AI system to summarize a policy, troubleshoot an error message, rewrite an email or translate customer material may expose data long before a formal “AI project” appears on an IT roadmap.
The report offers no figures on enterprise licensing, data classification, identity integration, retention controls or adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Saudi organizations. Its results should therefore not be presented as proof of organizational AI maturity. They show a fast-growing population of AI users, many of whom are using tools for everyday search, learning and content production.
Saudi Arabia’s broader connectivity numbers explain why the transition could move quickly. Internet penetration reached 99.6%; average mobile data consumption was 53 GB per person per month; and median mobile download speed was 216 Mbps. CST says that placed the Kingdom among the top five G20 countries on that mobile-speed measure. In a market where 99.6% of people are online and 61.3% of users spend seven or more hours online daily, mobile AI services have a very large addressable base.
The immediate story is not that women have displaced men from AI use. It is that Saudi Arabia’s most visible AI divide is between everyday, user-led adoption and the smaller share of usage tied to work and technical tasks. ChatGPT’s first-place download ranking and Copilot’s fifth-place position show where consumer demand currently sits; the next meaningful measure will be whether organizations convert that demand into governed, identity-managed and data-safe AI use.
References
- Primary source: CairoScene
Published: 2026-08-02T10:50:08.720623
Saudi Women Outpace Men in AI Tool Usage
More than half of female internet users in Saudi Arabia reported using AI tools in 2025, according to a new report.
cairoscene.com
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Saudi Internet Report 2025
Explore the Saudi Internet Report 2025 with the latest internet usage statistics, user behavior, apps, and digital infrastructure insights across Saudi Arabia.www.cst.gov.sa
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Digital 2025: Saudi Arabia — DataReportal – Global Digital Insights
All the data, insights, and trends you need to help you make sense of the “state of digital” in Saudi Arabia in 2025, including detailed statistics for internet use, social media use, and mobile use, as well as user numbers for all the top social platforms.datareportal.com
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ChatGPT tops list of downloaded apps, women use AI tools more than menwww.middleeastainews.com - Related coverage: ciome.economictimes.indiatimes.com
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Saudi AI tool penetration reaches 45% in 2025 - Telecompaper
The Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST) has released the Saudi Internet Report 2025, which says 45.2 percent of internet users in Saudi Arabia now utilise AI tools. The report says average mobile data consumption reached 53 GB per person monthly, which is triple the global...www.telecompaper.com - Related coverage: gulfict.news
Saudi AI Adoption Reaches 45.2% in 2025 — Gulf ICT
Saudi Arabia’s Internet Report 2025 shows 45.2% AI adoption, 53GB monthly mobile data use and median mobile speeds of 216 Mbps.www.gulfict.news
- Related coverage: techafricanews.com
Saudi Arabia's AI Adoption Reaches 45% as Internet Usage Soars - TechAfrica News
According to the report, 45.2% of internet users in Saudi Arabia now use AI tools, reflecting the country's rapid embrace of emerging technologies across both personal and professional applications.techafricanews.com - Related coverage: cst.gov.sa