Google: Gemini users in SEA have doubled, Malaysia among its fastest-growing markets
Google has announced that the number of active Gemini users in Southeast Asia has more than doubled over the past year, with Malaysia emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets after its user base doubled within just a few months.
The figures were revealed in Google’s first Gemini Report: Southeast Asia 2026, which looks at how users in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines are using the AI assistant. Google says the app now has 900 million monthly active users globally, with Southeast Asia becoming its fastest-growing region thanks to its young, digitally connected population and Gemini’s support for local languages.
According to the report, younger users are driving much of Gemini’s growth in the region. Google says Gen Z users tend to submit more prompts, have longer conversations with Gemini and provide more detailed instructions than older age groups.
On top of that, Google claims that Gemini’s language support is another key factor behind its popularity. Nearly 70% of prompts across Southeast Asia are submitted in native languages, with Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia recording the highest usage. Google also highlighted AI Singapore’s SEA-HELM benchmark, which ranked Gemini as the best-performing large language model overall for Southeast Asian languages.
Google also noted that Gemini is primarily being used on smartphones, with almost three-quarters of requests coming from mobile devices. More than 40% of prompts involve voice, images or videos instead of text, while over 10% are made using voice alone through features such as Gemini Live.
Beyond answering questions, Google says users are increasingly turning to Gemini for content creation and productivity. Around 40% of prompts ask the AI to generate content such as images, videos, music or documents, while others use it to summarise documents, organise information or get recommendations for travel, gifts and other everyday tasks.
For Malaysia, Google says users are embracing Gemini for image generation more than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. According to the company, one in five Malaysian users have used Gemini to create AI-generated images, the highest proportion in the region since the launch of Nano Banana in August 2025.
The report also noted a shift in language usage among Malaysian users, as while English remains the preferred language for work and productivity tasks, prompts submitted in Bahasa Malaysia more than doubled in early 2026 compared to a year earlier.
Google says it will continue expanding Gemini’s capabilities with Gemini Spark, its new AI agent that can proactively complete tasks across Workspace apps such as Gmail, Docs and Slides. The feature is currently available in English for Google AI Ultra subscribers and will begin rolling out in Southeast Asian languages starting this week.
If you want to check out the full report yourself, you can click here to access it.
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