The findings were released in Google's first Gemini Report: Southeast Asia 2026, which examined adoption trends in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The report comes as the Gemini app reaches 900 million monthly active users globally, driven by the region's young, mobile-first population and growing use of local languages.
Philippine trends
Among Southeast Asian markets, the Philippines is the only country where female users generate more Gemini prompts than male users, according to Google.
The report also found that Filipinos use the AI assistant heavily for writing, creative work and career guidance.
About 24 percent of prompts from the Philippines are generated during the creative process, making creativity the country's most common use case. Another 17 percent focus specifically on writing tasks, ranging from drafting content to refining ideas.
Google also found that Filipinos frequently turn to Gemini for career advice, with job-seeking and staffing-related prompts proving more popular in the country than anywhere else in Southeast Asia.
The Philippines also stands out for its business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, where professionals use Gemini to assist with customer service activities and marketing content creation.
According to the report, the country records three times the regional average share of customer support-related prompts.
"We are so proud to see that Gemini has become the AI of choice for many users across Southeast Asia," Google vice president for Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier Sapna Chadha said.
"What makes this region so remarkable is how naturally it has been woven into daily life. People aren't just adapting to Gemini, they are using it on their own terms—in modalities they prefer, in languages they speak, and in contexts unique to their lives."
Regional growth
Google attributed Gemini's rapid expansion in Southeast Asia to the region's youthful demographics, with nearly 40 percent of its population under the age of 25.
The report found that younger users make more requests, hold longer conversations with Gemini, and write more detailed prompts than older users.
Language has also become a major driver of adoption.
Nearly 70 percent of prompts submitted across the region are written in native languages, led by Vietnam at 89 percent, Thailand at 87 percent, and Indonesia at 84 percent.
Google said Gemini has become the most searched-for AI assistant in those three countries.
The company noted that AI Singapore's Southeast Asia Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (SEA-HELM) benchmark ranked Gemini as the best-performing large language model for Southeast Asian languages overall.
"AI adoption happens when technology feels native, not translated," said Dr. Leslie Teo, senior director of AI Products at AI Singapore.
He said models that understand local context and languages are essential to expanding AI adoption across the region.
Mobile-first AI
The report also highlighted Southeast Asia's preference for mobile and multimodal AI interactions.
Nearly three out of four Gemini requests come from mobile devices, while more than four in 10 prompts involve voice commands, photos or video uploads instead of text alone.
One in 10 users rely entirely on voice features such as Gemini Live.
Google said creative tasks have become another major use case, with roughly 40 percent of regional queries asking Gemini to generate new content, including images, music, videos and written documents.
Over the past year, users in Southeast Asia created about 5 billion images using Google's Nano Banana image generation model and nearly 1 million songs through its Lyria 3 music generation model.
The company also found that users increasingly depend on Gemini as a research assistant, using it to summarize documents, organize information, solve problems and seek recommendations.
Next phase
Google said it is expanding Gemini's capabilities with the introduction of Gemini Spark, a cloud-based AI agent designed to perform tasks on users' behalf rather than simply answering questions.
Integrated with Google Workspace applications such as Gmail, Docs and Slides, Gemini Spark can continue working in the background even when devices are not actively in use.
The feature is currently available in English for Google AI Ultra subscribers and will begin rolling out in Southeast Asian languages for Ultra subscribers starting this week.
Google also announced expanded in-chat shopping features for users in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, allowing consumers to compare products, browse listings and view pricing information directly within Gemini conversations. —Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
