TLDR
AI adoption among Australian businesses has jumped from 1% to 12%, with information and telecommunications firms leading the field at 38%. The federal government has created a new Office of AI inside Prime Minister and Cabinet and released a national framework to coordinate policy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
How fast AI adoption has moved across Australian business
The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not ordinarily produce figures that prompt a double-take. Its latest business characteristics release is an exception. Almost one in eight Australian businesses, 12%, used artificial intelligence in 2024-25, against 1% in the survey before it.[1] The bureau dates that earlier reading to 2022-23 in its key statistics and to 2021-22 in its commentary, so the run-up is either two years or three depending on which line you read. The direction is not in question. The level of adoption has risen roughly twelvefold, a rate of change that sits outside the normal register of the bureau's business surveys.
At the last count before this one, AI adoption was a rounding error in the national accounts. Today it is a measurable structural feature of how Australian enterprises operate, and the trajectory shows no sign of flattening.
Which industries are leading and which are catching up
Information media and telecommunications recorded the highest level of AI use at 38% of businesses in 2024-25, a figure that reflects both the sector's technical capability and the direct commercial pressure to automate content, data processing and customer interaction.[1] Professional services and financial firms follow, while health care, manufacturing and mining are increasingly applying machine learning to predictive maintenance, clinical decision support and operational optimisation.
The gap between innovators and the rest is telling. The ABS found that 20% of innovation-active businesses used AI in 2024-25, compared with 6% for non-innovation-active businesses.[1] Firms already disposed to experiment are absorbing AI far faster than those that are not, which risks compounding existing productivity divides across the economy.
Among smaller operators, the National Artificial Intelligence Centre and research firm Fifth Quadrant found that 37% of small and medium-sized enterprises had adopted AI.[2] That figure, drawn from survey work commissioned by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, sits well above the ABS headline rate and suggests SME uptake may be outpacing the broader business population in some segments.
What the federal AI framework and Office of AI actually do
The Albanese government's response to the adoption surge is structural rather than incremental. The Office of AI was established within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, effective 15 July 2026, giving AI policy a home at the centre of government rather than dispersed across line agencies.[3] Cabinet views AI coordination as a whole-of-government obligation, not a task to be left to the industry or communications portfolios alone.
The accompanying national framework is designed to align regulatory approaches across sectors, with the stated aim of enabling innovation without sacrificing safeguards on ethics, data centre energy and water use, and the intellectual property of Australian creators. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that "this world leading framework is about Australia choosing to shape the future rather than letting the future of AI shape us."[3]
Senator Tim Ayres, the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, linked the AI agenda to the government's broader industrial policy. "A Future Made in Australia is all about shaping Australia's industrial and technological future in the national interest and in the interest of every Australian," Ayres said.[3] AI investment is being positioned alongside clean energy and sovereign manufacturing as a pillar of the government's economic strategy, not as a standalone technology initiative.
The National AI Capability Plan, supported by the National Artificial Intelligence Centre, has been directed at equipping smaller businesses and regional operators with the tools and skills to integrate AI into their workflows, where the gap between capability and intent is often widest.
Investment, patents and research: the pipeline behind the growth
The business adoption numbers do not exist in isolation. Australia attracted $0.7 billion in private AI investment in 2024, placing the country among the top 20 nations globally by that measure.[2] The figure comes from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources' review of Australia's AI ecosystem published in June 2025, which drew on international investment tracking data.
AI patent applications nearly quadrupled and research publications more than doubled in Australia between 2015 and 2024.[2] Patent activity and publication volume are imperfect proxies for commercialisation, but the scale of the increase points to a knowledge base that is substantively larger than it was a decade ago, and one that has only recently begun converting into deployed products and services.
Australia's $0.7 billion sits well behind the United States, China and several European economies. The top 20 ranking reflects a relatively open investment environment and a capable research sector rather than a dominant market position; it is a measure of trajectory, not scale.
Workers, skills and the broader economy
A twelvefold increase in AI adoption carries workforce implications that the adoption statistics alone do not fully surface. The sectors where uptake is highest, information and telecommunications, professional services and finance, are also among the heaviest employers of knowledge workers whose tasks are most directly affected by large language models and automation tools.
The government's framework acknowledges the skills dimension, with the National AI Capability Plan directed at retraining and capability-building alongside deployment support. Whether that investment matches the pace of adoption is a question the framework itself does not answer with specificity.
The three-to-one gap between innovation-active and non-innovation-active businesses in AI use is a structural warning sign.[1] If AI compounds the advantage of firms already inclined to innovate, the productivity gap between the leading and lagging parts of the economy widens precisely when policy attention is focused on aggregate adoption rates. The ABS headline rate stood at 12% in 2024-25; the more instructive number to watch in coming releases is whether the gap between innovators and the rest narrows or holds.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What percentage of Australian businesses used AI in 2024-25?
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What is the Office of AI and what does it do?
How much private investment did Australia attract in AI in 2024?
Are innovation-active businesses more likely to use AI?
Diana Trent writes about regulation, competition and the law as it meets technology. She reads the judgments and the regulator filings that most people skip, and finds the story in them.
