Across EU member countries, only 7% of companies employing more than ten people used AI applications in 2020, Eurostat said in a report published on 13 April.

Enterprises using AI did so to analyse big data using machine learning (2%), use a chatbot or virtual agent to reply to customers (2%), employ service robots (2%) or analyse big data using natural language processing and generation or speech recognition (1%).

It should be noted, however, that the data excludes the financial centre.

Ireland recorded the highest share of enterprises that used any of the four AI applications considered in the data set. It was followed by Malta, Finland and Denmark (11%).

Less than 10% of enterprises used any of the four AI applications in 2020 in all other member countries. Poland (4%), Slovenia, Hungary, Cyprus (3% each) and Latvia (2%) recorded the lowest shares.

Luxembourg at 6% was in the company of Czechia, Estonia, France, Croatia, the Netherlands and Romania.