AI use in Brazil: 50 million already use it, says Cetic.br

AI use in Brazil reached 32% of internet users aged 10 or older, around 50 million people, according to Cetic.br/NIC.br’s ICT Households 2025 survey, which interviewed 24,535 people at home and measured, for the first time, the use of generative AI tools in the three months before the interview. Use is concentrated among people with more schooling, higher income and younger age: 69% in class A against 16% in classes D and E, 59% among people with higher education against 17% among those who stopped at primary school, 55% among 16 to 24 year olds against 6% among those aged 60 or older. Half of users say they use AI for work. My reading is that Brazilian companies are still debating whether to adopt AI while a large share of their customers and employees already arrive with the habit formed on their phones, on personal accounts and almost always on the free version.

At Iasbeck&Co we implement CRM and AI agents in B2B operations and train the teams that work with them. The data on companies is in AI in Brazilian companies. This article is about people, using official sources and institutes that publish their sample and method, with my reading for executives, team leaders and HR.

How many Brazilians use generative AI?

The two national surveys from 2025 with large samples arrive at 32% and 43%, and the difference comes from the base and the question.

The official number: ICT Households 2025

Cetic.br has run ICT Households since 2005, with face-to-face interviews in urban and rural areas and a sampling plan based on the Census and on IBGE’s continuous household survey. The 2025 edition visited 27,177 households, and the executive summary records that 32% of internet users used generative AI tools in the three months before the survey. The same summary reports that 85% of the population aged 10 or older used the internet in 2025, which, by my own calculation, puts generative AI use at around 27% of the whole population in that age range. Cetic.br does not publish this figure, and I use it only as an order of magnitude. Because the indicator debuted in 2025, there is no time series yet.

Datafolha and Fundação Itaú: 43% use text tools

The Fundação Itaú Observatory and Datafolha interviewed 2,798 people aged 16 or older between July 7 and 15, 2025, in person at high-traffic public locations, with a margin of error of 2 points. In this survey, 43% said they use text generation tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek, and 31% use image or video generation. Among users of AI text, image, video or voice tools, 69% stick to the free version, 11% use only paid versions and 20% use both.

The higher number has a methodological explanation. Datafolha’s base is the population aged 16 or older, without the internet use filter, the question names the products, and street intercepts reach a different profile from a randomly selected household. For anyone searching how many Brazilians use ChatGPT, this is the closest answer from an institute with a published sample, with no breakdown by brand.

Why the 93% figure misleads

The same survey produced the headline that 93% of Brazilians use AI. The number is in the source, but it adds up indirect use: 89% mentioned social networks, 78% recommendation systems such as Netflix and Spotify, and 63% navigation apps. Anyone scrolling an Instagram feed counts. Rankings that place Brazil among the countries that visit ChatGPT the most also circulate, and the ones I found come from web traffic measurement companies, which count site visits, so I left them out of this article.

Who uses generative AI in Brazil: age, class and education

Age, schooling and income separate users from non-users more than region or sex. The gap between men (35%) and women (30%) is small next to the gap between classes.

Breakdown (ICT Households 2025)	Used generative AI
All internet users (aged 10 or older)	32%
10 to 15 years	40%
16 to 24 years	55%
25 to 34 years	44%
35 to 44 years	30%
45 to 59 years	18%
60 years or older	6%
Primary education	17%
Secondary education	29%
Higher education	59%
Class A	69%
Class B	52%
Class C	32%
Classes D and E	16%
Formal worker	43%
Informal worker	33%

Source: Cetic.br/NIC.br, table M1 of ICT Households 2025. Base: all internet users.

The group that uses it most matches the profile of B2B buyers and managers: higher education, classes A and B, formal employment. Very different realities coexist inside the same company. A 28 year old analyst with a degree belongs to a group in which more than half use generative AI, and a 50 year old operator with secondary education, to a group in which fewer than one in five do. Leadership that imagines the whole team at the same point gets it wrong in one direction or the other.

What do Brazilians use generative AI for?

Among generative AI users, 84% used it for personal purposes, 53% for school or university research and work, and 50% for professional use, according to table M2, with multiple answers allowed. Professional use rises to 61% among users in the labor force, 65% among formal workers and 69% among those with higher education. By my calculation, if 43% of connected formal workers used generative AI and 65% of them used it for work, around 28% of these workers brought AI into their jobs in the three months before the survey, without accounting for the margin of error.

Datafolha shows what people do with the tool: searching for topics (58%), summarizing documents and answering complex questions (56%), movie and music recommendations (51%) and learning something or finding courses (50%). Support for work appears for half of users and for 74% of those with a completed degree. In the Ipsos AI Monitor 2026, 59% of working Brazilians say AI saved them time at work in the last year, close to the 32-country average of 62%. This is perception, without time measurement, and the studies that measured it are in generative AI and productivity.

Why do some Brazilians still not use AI?

Among internet users who did not use generative AI, the most cited reason is lack of interest or need (76%), followed by security or privacy concerns (63%), lack of skill (58%) and not knowing the tool existed (52%), according to table M3. The question accepts more than one reason, and the breakdowns change the order.

Reason for not using generative AI (ICT Households 2025)	Total	Primary education	Higher education	60 or older
Lack of interest or need	76%	66%	87%	65%
Security or privacy concerns	63%	64%	68%	68%
Lack of skill to use it	58%	65%	50%	72%
Did not know the tool existed	52%	63%	30%	66%

Source: Cetic.br/NIC.br, table M3. Base: internet users who did not use generative AI.

Datafolha asked people who had never used AI for their main reason, and the order repeats: lack of interest (34%), not knowing about it (24%), difficulty using it (17%) and lack of trust (15%). For HR, the figure that matters is privacy, cited by 68% of non-users with higher education. Part of the team that does not use AI stays away out of concern for what happens to the data, and a clear company rule answers that concern.

How does Brazil compare with other countries in AI use?

Eurostat measured that 33% of people aged 16 to 74 in the European Union used generative AI in the three months before the 2025 survey, the first year the question appeared in the official survey, ranging from 48% in Denmark to 18% in Romania. The pattern by age and education mirrors Brazil’s, and so does the main reason for not using it: 64% of European non-users said they felt no need. The bases differ, since Eurostat divides by the population and Cetic.br by internet users, so I do not treat the comparison as a ranking. Converted to the population, Brazil sits at around 27%, below the European average and above Italy (20%) and Romania.

Two international online surveys include Brazil in more specific questions. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026, run by YouGov in 48 markets between January and February 2026, shows 13% of Brazilians using an AI chatbot for news in the previous week. The Ipsos AI Monitor 2026 surveyed 23,532 adults in 32 countries, about a thousand of them in Brazil.

Indicator	Brazil	Comparison	Source
Used generative AI in the last 3 months	32% of internet users (aged 10 or older)	33% of the population aged 16 to 74 in the EU	Cetic.br 2025; Eurostat 2025
Young people who used generative AI	55% (16 to 24 years)	64% (16 to 24 years)	Cetic.br 2025; Eurostat 2025
Oldest group that used it	6% (60 or older)	7% (65 to 74 years)	Cetic.br 2025; Eurostat 2025
AI chatbot for news in the last week	13%	10% global; 6% USA; 4% UK	Reuters Institute 2026
“I don’t always trust AI tools, but I use them anyway”	61%	63% (32-country average)	Ipsos 2026
“I trust AI tools, so I don’t check their work”	32%	31% (32-country average)	Ipsos 2026

Ipsos states that the Brazilian sample is more urban, more educated or more affluent than the population, and the Reuters Institute recommends reading its results as a picture of the online population. Both are useful for comparing countries and do not replace ICT Households as the measure for Brazil.

What changes for companies when customers and employees already use AI

None of these surveys measures purchasing or work inside companies. What follows is my reading, based on our projects, of what these numbers change in operations.

In customer service

Customers who use generative AI have grown used to asking in plain language, getting a complete answer right away and asking again. The Reuters Institute sees this pattern even in news: the follow-up question is the most cited use in 33 of 45 markets, Brazil included. These customers reach the company’s WhatsApp with that yardstick, and a numbered menu or a canned reply that ignores the question feels slow. The answer depends on an organized knowledge base and on the customer’s history in the CRM, the subject of AI in customer service.

In marketing

Part of the research buyers used to do on search engines has moved to chatbots. In the Digital News Report 2026, only 4% of respondents across 27 markets said they always or often click through to the original source of news received from a chatbot, against 19% on search engines. The data is about news, and even so it points to a habit: people keep the chatbot’s answer and stop visiting the site. A company’s content now also serves as raw material for AI answers, which calls for material with clear data, method and authorship, as I discuss in AI in B2B marketing.

Inside the company

If half of users use generative AI for work and 69% stick to the free version, according to Datafolha, part of the company’s work probably already runs through personal accounts, with no contract and no rule about which data goes in. The surveys do not measure this directly, and I treat it as a strong hypothesis. Ipsos completes the picture: a third of Brazilians say they trust the tools enough not to check what they deliver. The first step is to tell the team which tools are approved, with which data and who checks the output, as I describe in AI usage policy.

Summary of the surveys cited

Source	Year	Sample and method	Main finding
Cetic.br/NIC.br, ICT Households 2025	2025	24,535 people aged 10 or older in 27,177 households, face-to-face interviews, probability sample	32% of internet users used generative AI, around 50 million; 50% of users use it for work
Fundação Itaú Observatory and Datafolha	2025	2,798 in-person interviews with people aged 16 or older at high-traffic locations, July 2025	43% use text tools such as ChatGPT; 69% of users only on the free version
Eurostat, Use of artificial intelligence by individuals	2025	Official EU survey on ICT use in households, ages 16 to 74	33% used generative AI; 64% among 16 to 24 year olds
Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2026	2026	YouGov online survey in 48 markets, with quotas for age, sex and region	13% of Brazilians used a chatbot for news in the week, against 10% globally
Ipsos AI Monitor 2026	2026	23,532 adults in 32 countries, online panel; about a thousand in Brazil, more connected sample	61% use AI without always trusting it; 32% do not check its work

What this data does not tell us

All these surveys measure self-reported use. Someone who uses an AI feature built into a messaging app may not realize they used it, and another respondent may count a single attempt as use. The time window also varies: three months for Cetic.br and Eurostat, one week for the Reuters Institute.

None of them measures the quality of use. Knowing that half of users use AI for work does not say whether the work improved, whether the person checked the answer or whether they put customer data into a personal account. The association between schooling and use also does not support saying that AI raises the income of those who use it: income, schooling and good connectivity come first, and Cetic.br itself records that 39% of mobile phone owners ran out of data at least once in three months.

Data collection for ICT Households 2025 ended in the second half of 2025, and the 2026 edition is only expected at the end of the year. In that interval, the Reuters Institute recorded that weekly use of generative AI in six countries nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025, from 18% to 34%. The numbers in this article work as a floor.

What leadership does with these numbers

1. Use the right number in the meeting. For the population, cite ICT Households: 32% of internet users, around 50 million people, in 2025. The 93% figure includes social media and does not help discuss generative AI.
2. Find out how much your customers use it. Cross the profile of your CRM base with Cetic.br’s breakdowns. B2B buyers with higher education belong to a group in which nearly six in ten use it, and a mass retail base, to a group in which fewer than two in ten do.
3. Review customer service against the chatbot yardstick. Read a sample of conversations and count how many plain-language questions the channel answers on the first try, with no menu and no transfer.
4. Ask the team what it already uses. Run an anonymous survey by area on tools, account type and the data that goes in.
5. Write the policy before buying licenses. Define approved tools, allowed data, who checks the output and where the result is recorded.
6. Train by role and by starting point. A manager with a degree and an operator with secondary education start from different places, and a single class tends to frustrate both.

What HR and L&D take from this data

The team already arrives with AI in their pocket, at very different intensities by age and schooling, and the diagnosis starts with what each group already does. Some non-users cite lack of skill and fear of exposing data, and 62% of Datafolha respondents said they would like to learn more about AI. These barriers give way to training and clear rules, and the design of role-based classes is in AI training for companies.

Customers and employees already use generative AI on their own, on free accounts and with little habit of checking the answer, while the company decides where to start. Bringing that use into the process is the work of the in-company applied AI training, built on the company’s processes and data, with classes for executives, leaders and sales, marketing and customer service teams. It delivers the prompt library by area and the agent architecture, with what each agent reads, what it executes on its own and who approves the rest.

Frequently asked questions

How many Brazilians use generative AI?

According to Cetic.br’s ICT Households 2025, 32% of internet users aged 10 or older used generative AI tools in the three months before the survey, around 50 million people. In the Datafolha survey with Fundação Itaú, 43% of people aged 16 or older said they use text tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

How many Brazilians use ChatGPT?

I found no official or institute survey with a published sample that separates ChatGPT from other tools. The closest figure is Datafolha’s: 43% use text generation tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek. Country rankings of visits come from web traffic measurement companies, which count site visits.

Who uses AI the most in Brazil?

Young people, people with higher education and those in classes A and B. Cetic.br measured 55% use among internet users aged 16 to 24, 59% among those with higher education and 69% in class A, against 6% among those aged 60 or older and 16% in classes D and E.

Does Brazil use more or less AI than Europe?

On average, slightly less. The European Union measured 33% of the population aged 16 to 74 in 2025, and Brazil has 32% of internet users, around 27% of the population aged 10 or older by my calculation. In chatbot use for news, Brazil is above the global average, at 13% against 10%, according to the Reuters Institute.

Do Brazilians use AI at work?

Half of generative AI users use the tool for professional purposes, according to Cetic.br, and the share rises to 65% among formal workers who use AI. In the Ipsos survey, 59% of working Brazilians say AI saved them time in the last year, based on their own perception.

How do I prepare my team to use AI?

Start with a survey of what each area already uses and on which account, write the tools and data policy and train people according to their role in the process. Include in the training how to ask, how to check the answer and where to record the result, because a third of Brazilians say they do not check what AI delivers.