Innovation & Tech

Cyprus Leads Europe in AI Use, But Its Businesses Lag Far Behind

New Eurostat data reveals a striking gap between how Cypriots use artificial intelligence in their personal lives and the slow pace at which the island's companies have adopted it.

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NIKI LAOU

 

Nearly half of Cyprus' population used a generative artificial intelligence tool in the past year, placing the island among the top performers in the European Union and well ahead of major economies such as Germany, Italy, and France. Yet the same data reveals a sharp contradiction: when it comes to businesses, Cyprus ranks near the bottom of the bloc, with adoption rates less than half the European average. The picture that emerges is of a society that has enthusiastically embraced AI as individuals, while its companies have been far slower to follow.

The figures come from Eurostat's annual survey on the use of information and communication technologies, published in December 2025. They show that 44.2% of Cypriots aged 16 to 74 used generative AI tools in the three months prior to the survey, compared to an EU average of 32.7%. Only Denmark, Estonia, and Malta recorded higher rates. Among young Cypriots aged 16 to 24, the figure rises to 76.5%, the highest youth adoption rate in the entire EU, above Greece at 83.5% and Estonia at 82.8%.

What people are using

Globally, the landscape of AI tools has consolidated rapidly around a small number of dominant platforms. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, recorded 388 million monthly active users and nearly 5.84 billion website visits in August 2025 alone, according to data from the analytics firm Similarweb. In Europe, ChatGPT commands more than 80% of the generative AI market, with the remainder divided among Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Anthropic's Claude. The tools that people reach for have also broadened: video editors such as CapCut, design platforms such as Canva, and productivity tools such as Notion now rely so heavily on AI features that analysts have begun classifying them as generative AI products in their own right.

UK data from the Internet Advertising Bureau shows that the top three uses of AI at work are generating ideas (44%), looking up information (41%), and creating written content (39%). Usage is concentrated during working hours, with 44% of time spent on AI tools occurring between 9am and 5.30pm, and the technology has made the deepest inroads among users aged 15 to 24.

The Cypriot paradox

Against this backdrop, the gap between individual and business adoption in Cyprus is particularly striking. While residents are among Europe's most active personal users, only 9.27% of Cypriot companies with ten or more employees used AI technologies in 2025, according to Eurostat. The EU average stands at nearly 20%, and Denmark leads at 42%. Cyprus ranks ahead of only Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Turkey, and Romania in business adoption, a group that represents the bloc's laggards rather than its peers.

Countries with high individual AI use tend to have stronger business adoption too, driven by a well-established digital infrastructure and a workforce already comfortable with technology. Researchers at KU Leuven have noted that the countries showing the highest adoption are those already most advanced in digitalisation more broadly. In Cyprus, however, the data suggests that individuals have crossed that threshold while many employers have not.

Productivity in question

Whether AI is actually delivering on its productivity promise remains contested in research circles. Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey found that 84% of developers now use or plan to use AI tools, and 51% use them daily. Positive sentiment, however, has dropped from over 70% in 2023 to 60% in 2025, amid growing concerns about accuracy and reliability. A study by the nonprofit research organisation METR, published in July 2025, found that experienced developers who believed AI had made them 20% faster were, by objective measurement, actually 19% slower when using AI tools, a gap it attributed partly to time spent reviewing and correcting AI-generated output.

At the enterprise level, the picture is similarly uneven. Companies that have moved earliest into AI adoption report substantial returns, but 70 to 85% of AI initiatives across industries still fail to meet expected outcomes, according to a review of research by the analytics firm Fullview. For Cyprus, where business adoption remains low, the debate over whether AI delivers measurable value may matter less than the more fundamental question of whether companies will engage with the technology at all.

Three in four Cypriots under 25 are using generative AI tools, shaping expectations about how work, learning, and creativity should feel. Whether the institutions they enter can meet those expectations is a different matter entirely.

 

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#CYPRUS NEWS #CYPRUS #INNOVATION & TECH #ECONOMY #ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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