The AI Opportunity

Shaping Indonesia's AI era.

Indonesia enters the AI era with real momentum: decades of strong growth, a young and digitally connected population, a thriving creative economy and a base of AI users that is already among the most sophisticated in the region.

The next opportunity is to turn that early adoption into deeper, more confident use across the whole economy. Used well, AI will not just save time. It can help Indonesia build the skills, innovation capacity and higher-value industries needed to move beyond middle-income status, unlock the potential of SMEs, and close long-standing gaps in access to healthcare and education.

Today, we’re publishing a factsheet looking at some of the opportunities AI is starting to create in Indonesia. We estimate that faster AI-enabled R&D alone could create an additional IDR 56 trillion (US$3.4 billion) in economic value, while if SMEs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock IDR 910 trillion (US$55 billion) in additional value, equivalent to 3.8% of GDP.

View the Indonesia Factsheet
Lihat Lembar Fakta Indonesia
Read the Methodology

Here are five opportunities and priorities from AI we looked at in Indonesia:

Helping SMEs capture more of the AI dividend.
If SMEs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock IDR 910 trillion (US$55 billion) in additional value, equivalent to 3.8% of GDP.
Building on Indonesia's sophisticated AI users.
Indonesia’s AI users are already unusually advanced. In our polling, 27% of online adults are “light users” of AI (simple chat and drafting only), 49% are “intermediate users” and 14% qualify as “AI Super Users”. Combined, intermediate and super users make up nearly two thirds of all AI users (63%), compared to 46% in the US.
Accelerating research and discovery.
By generating and ranking new ideas, AI systems could help scientists and researchers in Indonesia explore 2x more plausible hypotheses each year, increasing the chances of breakthrough discoveries in both the private and public sectors.
Giving workers the training they actually want.

88% of workers in Indonesia said they would be interested in skills training to help them better take advantage of AI. In our polling, 31% of workers said they wanted to better understand how AI models worked, 38% would like to know more practical use cases of how to use AI and 38% how they can best prompt AI models to get the most out of them.

Building trust through stronger safeguards.
In our polling, over 89% of people in Indonesia said that it was important for AI developers to incorporate safeguards such as pre-release testing, independent verification, and greater protection for children or other vulnerable users.

The factsheet also looks at how AI could help Indonesia respond to some of its most pressing challenges. In education, AI support for lesson planning and personalised feedback could free up 5.5 hours a week for each teacher, while AI-powered educational agents could improve learning outcomes by 12%. In healthcare, AI-enabled telemedicine could shift 25% of priority chronic disease cases toward earlier detection and prevention-focused management, avoiding IDR 22 trillion (US$1.3 billion) in downstream treatment costs each year, and better AI-enabled care navigation could close 22% of the healthy life expectancy gap between Eastern and Western Indonesia. In the creative economy, generative media tools could unlock IDR 66 trillion (US$4.1 billion) a year in economic potential and enable 1.8 million new professional creators by 2035.

The opportunity for Indonesia is not just to adopt AI faster, but to use it better. With the right skills, safeguards and access, AI can help more people and businesses take part in the next wave of growth, and help Indonesia make the leap beyond middle-income status.