Understanding the AI Economy
Google, Thursday, July 23rd, 2026
Google's ATLAS study finds AI use at work is broad but shallow across 150+ countries.
Google released ATLAS (Activity, Task, Landscape, and Adoption Study), described as its first comprehensive research report on how people use AI globally.
The study analyzed 15 million aggregated Gemini interactions across more than 150 countries and 800 occupations.
It found that AI use at work is "broad but shallow," applied to roughly 21% of typical job tasks and used more for collaboration than automation. Adoption reaches beyond office workers into manual trades, and most AI interactions occur outside work for administrative and household tasks.