Vietnam has emerged as Southeast Asia's biggest user of Google's Gemini for learning, with more than 160,000 students using its exam preparation features every month and academic-related prompts making up the largest share of AI queries in the region.

Google's Southeast Asia Gemini usage report, released on July 14, found that 17% of prompts submitted by users in Vietnam are related to education, well above the regional average of 11%, making the country the region's leading adopter of AI for academic purposes.

The report also showed that over 160,000 students use Gemini Canvas, Google's AI-powered study assistant, each month to prepare for exams. Teachers, meanwhile, generate around 55,000 education-related prompts every day.

Dang Thanh Nga, a Google Student Ambassador, said features such as Gemini Canvas help simplify difficult math concepts and troubleshoot programming code whenever she encounters obstacles.

"It is an effective way to solve problems and organize information, but critical thinking and the final polished output still have to come from us.

"[The tool] simply makes the learning process faster, more efficient, and better organized."

Breakdown of Gemini usage by task type in Vietnam and across six Southeast Asian countries. Screenshot

Vietnam also ranks first in Southeast Asia for using native language prompts on Gemini. About 89% of prompts from Vietnamese users are written in Vietnamese, compared with 87% in Thailand and 84% in Indonesia.

Google highlighted the case of a Shan Tuyet tea farmer in Lao Cai who used Gemini to translate documents, draft professional English emails and invoices, and sell products directly to customers in Europe and the U.S.

From such data, Google assessed that Gemini "plays an important bridging role in reaching global markets, with Vietnamese users relying on Gemini's translation and localization capabilities more than any other country in Southeast Asia."

Vietnam also ranks among the leading countries for coding support and mathematical reasoning requests, with 4% of prompts related to programming and 5% to mathematics. Some 32% of prompts from Vietnam are sent via desktop, the second highest in the region after Singapore.

Google reports that the relatively high desktop usage rate reflects strong demand among Vietnamese users for in-depth technical work that requires focus.

A user visits the website of a Vietnamese AI application on a computer. Photo by Nhut Nam

This is the first time Google has published a report on Gemini AI usage in the region covering Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

Gemini is Google's fastest-growing app in the region, with active users more than doubling over the past year. It is also the most searched AI assistant in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Sapna Chadha, Google's vice president for Southeast Asia and South Asia explained taht the region stands out because technology has become a natural part of everyday life, with users shaping Gemini around their own preferences, languages, and local contexts rather than simply adapting to it.

At the report launch, Google said it also plans to bring its AI agents such as Gemini Spark to consumers to transform Gemini from a question-answer assistant into a "partner" that directly helps users complete tasks.

Spark is a personalized AI agent that manages tasks and integrates deeply with Workspace tools such as Gmail, Docs, and Slides.

It is available in English for subscribers to the Google AI Ultra plan, and Google said it would roll out the agent across all local languages in Southeast Asia starting this week.