Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming integral to digital development.
Generative AI is being applied to create local-language learning resources, provide virtual health advice, and support farmers with climate-smart recommendations. These applications indicate that AI can enhance technology-for-development (Tech4D) efforts and contribute to socioeconomic and climate outcomes.
AI can also play a role in narrowing the mobile internet usage gap and advancing digital inclusion. Although mobile broadband now covers 96% of the global population, GSMA’s latest State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report shows that 3.1 billion people (38%) still do not use it. The challenge is less about infrastructure and more about barriers such as affordability, digital skills, safety, and relevant content. AI has the potential to help address these barriers, and, if developed and applied responsibly, could be valuable in driving adoption, helping people get online.
Ways AI can help
There is a spectrum of opportunities and ways in which AI is already being used (and can be used) to address the usage gap. AI-enabled voice assistants, for example, can make it easier for people with limited literacy to navigate phones and digital services. Translation and natural language processing tools are helping expand online content into local languages, making information more relevant in rural areas. Predictive analytics are already being tested by some mobile operators to design more affordable data bundles or to anticipate when users may struggle to stay connected. AI-driven content moderation tools can also support safer online spaces, helping to build trust among first-time users.
Balancing opportunities and risks
The potential of AI is significant, but so are the risks. Bias is a key challenge. AI systems trained on unrepresentative data can overlook the needs and realities of marginalised groups. This challenge plays out both globally, for example with underrepresented languages in large language models, and locally, where national or regional AI systems may fail to reflect the diversity of their own populations, especially of underrepresented and marginalised groups.
Lack of transparency can undermine confidence in digital services. And without safeguards, AI could facilitate scams or harmful content, discouraging people from coming online. For AI to support inclusion rather than deepen divides, careful attention must be paid to design, governance, and local context.
This is why GSMA Mobile for Development is launching new research to examine both the opportunities and risks of AI for digital inclusion in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The project will focus on how AI can support people, especially women, rural communities, and persons with disabilities, along the mobile internet user journey, with a primary emphasis on helping them adopt the internet in the first place, and secondly on deepening and sustaining their use.
Working together to unlock AI for digital inclusion
AI will not be a silver bullet, but it can be an important part of the toolkit for digital inclusion. We encourage mobile operators, mobile phone manufactures and distributors, startups and tech companies that are actively supporting digital inclusion initiatives (or are likely to in the future) to engage with this research and contribute their perspectives.
Our objective is to identify and support practical AI applications that can increase digital inclusion and help more people take their first steps onto the mobile internet as well as the potential risks and how they can be mitigated.
This initiative is currently funded by UK International Development from the UK government and by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and is supported by the GSMA and its members.
