ROME, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The number of Italian firms using artificial intelligence has doubled over the past year, a report showed on Monday, but the diffusion of the technology remains extremely low in an economy dominated by small and medium-sized businesses.
This year 16.4% of firms with at least 10 employees have used some form of AI technology, the report by national statistics bureau ISTAT said, up from 8.2% in 2024 and 5.0% in 2023.
The 83.6% of companies making no use of AI cited issues such as a lack of skills (58.6%), unclear regulation (47.3%), data protection concerns (43.2%) and high costs (43.0%).
About 14.8% said AI was of no use to them, slightly higher than 14.3% in 2023, ISTAT said. It did not give a figure for 2024.
Larger companies saw the sharpest increase in AI use.
Among firms with at least 250 employees the number who used AI over the last 12 months increased to 53.1%, from 32.5% in 2024. Among smaller firms usage increased to 15.7% from 7.7%.
Uptake was highest in IT services (53%), video production (49.5%) and telecoms (37.3%).
The most common uses of AI were for text data extraction (70.8%), generative AI for language and images (59.1%) and speech-to-text technologies (41.3%).
(Reporting by Valentina Consiglio, editing by Gavin Jones)
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