AI in the UK, 1950 to 2030

Where are you on your AI journey?

Seventy-five years of ideas, then three years of everyone. Press play to watch the UK take up AI, one dot at a time, then find your own dot.

 1950
Forecast

    Four quick questions

    Where are you?

    How we made this

    Every number, and where it came from.

    The grid shows people aged 15 to 64, split into 400 dots. The share who have used AI comes from measured figures below. Between measured points we draw a straight line.

    How that share splits into the five stages is our estimate, anchored to the government's 2024 survey of how often people use AI chatbots. Those splits are labelled as estimates wherever they appear.

    The forecast (2027 to 2030, hatched dots) fits an S-shaped adoption curve to Microsoft's three most recent measurements for each view, assuming no more than 85% of people ever take part. It is a projection, not a measurement.

    1. Share of working-age adults using AI, UK and world. UK 36.4% (first half of 2025), 38.9% (second half of 2025), 42.2% (early 2026). World 15.1%, 16.3%, 17.8%. Microsoft AI Economy Institute, AI Diffusion Report and update, published through Our World in Data. Modelled from usage of 19 AI tools; anyone from a single visit to daily use counts.
    2. 31% of UK adults online had used generative AI in 2023. Ofcom, Online Nation 2023 (Ofcom news release). Covers internet users aged 16 and over, so it is not measured the same way as Microsoft's figures.
    3. How often people use AI chatbots. 60% of UK adults had used an AI chatbot in the past three months, 23% at least weekly, 28% at least monthly for work (fieldwork July to August 2024). Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Public attitudes to data and AI, wave 4. This survey counts any AI chatbot, so its 60% is higher than Microsoft's figure; we use Microsoft's for the totals and this survey only for how often.
    4. ChatGPT visits in the UK. 1.8 billion in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier. Ofcom, Online Nation 2025.
    5. ChatGPT user numbers. One million users within five days of launch (Sam Altman, December 2022). 100 million weekly users (OpenAI DevDay, November 2023). 800 million weekly users (OpenAI DevDay, October 2025, TechCrunch report).
    6. People per dot. UK population aged 15 to 64, about 43.5 million; world, about 5.26 billion (2023). United Nations World Population Prospects, via Our World in Data.
    7. Our estimates. The five-stage split (who uses AI weekly, who builds with it, who has it working for them) and the 2027 to 2030 forecast are Hindover's own, made with the method above. Nobody yet measures the last two stages properly.

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