Italian firms using AI double in a year but still small minority

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)