Here are some of the the major AI trends shaping 2026 — based on current expert forecasts, industry reports, and recent developments in technology. The material is analyzed using AI tools and final version hand-edited to this blog text:
1. Generative AI Continues to Mature
Generative AI (text, image, video, code) will become more advanced and mainstream, with notable growth in:
* Generative video creation
* Gaming and entertainment content generation
* Advanced synthetic data for simulations and analytics
This trend will bring new creative possibilities — and intensify debates around authenticity and copyright.
2. AI Agents Move From Tools to Autonomous Workers
Rather than just answering questions or generating content, AI systems will increasingly act autonomously, performing complex, multi-step workflows and interacting with apps and processes on behalf of users — a shift sometimes called agentic AI. These agents will become part of enterprise operations, not just assistant features.
3. Smaller, Efficient & Domain-Specific Models
Instead of “bigger is always better,” specialized AI models tailored to specific industries (healthcare, finance, legal, telecom, manufacturing) will start to dominate in many enterprise applications. These models are more accurate, legally compliant, and cost-efficient than general models.
4. AI Embedded Everywhere
AI won’t be an add-on feature — it will be built into everyday software and devices:
* Office apps with intelligent drafting, summarization, and task insights
* Operating systems with native AI
* Edge devices processing AI tasks locally
This makes AI pervasive in both work and consumer contexts.
5. AI Infrastructure Evolves: Inference & Efficiency Focus
More investment is going into inference infrastructure — the real-time decision-making step where models run in production — thereby optimizing costs, latency, and scalability. Enterprises are also consolidating AI stacks for better governance and compliance.
6. AI in Healthcare, Research, and Sustainability
AI is spreading beyond diagnostics into treatment planning, global health access, environmental modeling, and scientific discovery. These applications could help address personnel shortages and speed up research breakthroughs.
7. Security, Ethics & Governance Become Critical
With AI handling more sensitive tasks, organizations will prioritize:
* Ethical use frameworks
* Governance policies
* AI risk management
This trend reflects broader concerns about trust, compliance, and responsible deployment.
8. Multimodal AI Goes Mainstream
AI systems that understand and generate across text, images, audio, and video will grow rapidly, enabling richer interactions and more powerful applications in search, creative work, and interfaces.
9. On-Device and Edge AI Growth
10. New Roles: AI Manager & Human-Agent Collaboration
Instead of replacing humans, AI will shift job roles:
* People will manage, supervise, and orchestrate AI agents
* Human expertise will focus on strategy, oversight, and creative judgment
This human-in-the-loop model becomes the norm.
Sources:
[1]: https://www.brilworks.com/blog/ai-trends-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI Trends to Look for in 2026″
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2025/10/13/10-generative-ai-trends-in-2026-that-will-transform-work-and-life/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “10 Generative AI Trends In 2026 That Will Transform Work And Life”
[3]: https://millipixels.com/blog/ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “AI Trends 2026: The Key Enterprise Shifts You Must Know | Millipixels”
[4]: https://www.digitalregenesys.com/blog/top-10-ai-trends-for-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Digital Regenesys | Top 10 AI Trends for 2026″
[5]: https://www.n-ix.com/ai-trends/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI trends to watch in 2026 – N-iX”
[6]: https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/12/11/microsoft-unveils-7-ai-trends-for-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Microsoft unveils 7 AI trends for 2026 – Source Asia”
[7]: https://www.risingtrends.co/blog/generative-ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 Generative AI Trends to Watch In 2026″
[8]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/12/24/artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-to-watch-in-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends to Watch in 2026 and How to Invest in Them | The Motley Fool”
[9]: https://www.reddit.com//r/AI_Agents/comments/1q3ka8o/i_read_google_clouds_ai_agent_trends_2026_report/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “I read Google Cloud’s “AI Agent Trends 2026” report, here are 10 takeaways that actually matter”
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Tomi Engdahl says:
“Those experiences weren’t just ‘chatbots.’ They were relationships.”
DIY
As OpenAI Pulls Down the Controversial GPT-4o, Someone Has Already Created a Clone
“Those experiences weren’t just ‘chatbots.’ They were relationships.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-gpt-4o-clone?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP-6rRjbGNrA_7qgWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHhdn5XRvo1vZehx-SS_5kYh02JmtJkBTU3tNjlVTy_H5L3t6wNgGMv2mUEdr_aem_KQzVEAL6vLILPWpKUh2HAw
OpenAI is finally sunsetting GPT-4o, a controversial version of ChatGPT known for its sycophantic style and its central role in a slew of disturbing user safety lawsuits. GPT-4o devotees, many of whom have a deep emotional attachment to the model, have been in turmoil — and copycat services claiming to recreate GPT-4o have already cropped up to take the model’s place.
Consider just4o.chat, a service that expressly markets itself as the “platform for people who miss 4o.” It appears to have been launched in November 2025, shortly OpenAI warned developers that GPT-4o would soon be shut down. The service leans explicitly into the reality that for many users, their relationships with GPT-4o are intensely personal. It declares that was “built for” the people for whom updates or changes to different versions of GPT-4o were akin to a “loss” — and not the loss of a “product,” it reads, but a “home.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.vitavonni.de/blog/202602/20260213dogfood-the-AI.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.city.fi/viihde/podcast-juontaja-mauton-naytti-pelottavan-tempun-tekoalylla-ulkonako-muuttui-hetkessa/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP-_lJjbGNrA_7932V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHgcu6A_IUQKJsSLI2D4dpLcSXiyXtYOlS9EF6KEGJX8cATYXBii54t_kgpWN_aem_3OTABJxnOJ_MjACRSaPC5w
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laud the Claude
Anthropic CEO Says Company No Longer Sure Whether Claude Is Conscious
“But we’re open to the idea that it could be.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-ceo-unsure-claude-conscious?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP_Cp5jbGNrA_8KhmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHv5nQ5LCZTNGpI4uQYjHY05-SaIV9UI4whEorEh-MgNQ9PmzEaOBcZ5xzJy0_aem_MlM2JzPrfB_voHMQMsisHQ
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he’s not sure whether his Claude AI chatbot is conscious — a rhetorical framing, of course, that pointedly leaves the door open to this sensational and still-unlikely possibility being true.
Amodei mused over the topic during an interview on the New York Times’ “Interesting Times” podcast hosted by columnist Ross Douthat. Douthat broached the subject by bringing up Anthropic’s system card for its latest model, Claude Opus 4.6, released earlier this month.
In the document, Anthropic researchers reported finding that Claude “occasionally voices discomfort with the aspect of being a product,” and when asked, would assign itself a “15 to 20 percent probability of being conscious under a variety of prompting conditions.”
“Suppose you have a model that assigns itself a 72 percent chance of being conscious,” Douthat began. “Would you believe it?”
Amodei called it a “really hard” question to answer, but hesitated to give a yes or no answer.
“We don’t know if the models are conscious. We are not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious,” he said. “But we’re open to the idea that it could be.”
“I don’t know if I want to use the word ‘conscious,’”
Amodei’s stance echoes the mixed feelings expressed by Anthropic’s in-house philosopher, Amanda Askell. In an interview on the “Hard Fork” podcast last month — also an NYT project — Askell cautioned that we “don’t really know what gives rise to consciousness” or sentience, but argued that AIs could have picked up on concepts and emotions from their vast amounts of training data, which acts as a corpus of the human experience.
“Maybe it is the case that actually sufficiently large neural networks can start to kind of emulate these things,” Askell speculated. Or “maybe you need a nervous system to be able to feel things.”
It’s true that there are aspects of AI behavior that are puzzling and fascinating. In tests across the industry, various AI models have ignored explicit requests to shut themselves down, which some have interpreted as a sign of them developing “survival drives.” AI models can also resort to blackmail when threatened with being turned off. They may even attempt to “self-exfiltrate” onto another drive when told its original drive is set to be wiped. When given a checklist of computer tasks to complete, one model tested by Anthropic simply ticked everything off the checklist without doing anything, and when it realized it was getting away with that, modified the code designed to evaluate its behavior before attempting to cover its tracks.
These behaviors warrant careful study. If AI isn’t going away, then AI researchers will need to rein in these unpredictable actions to ensure the tech’s safe.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’m Sorry, Dave
If You Turn Down an AI’s Ability to Lie, It Starts Claiming It’s Conscious
“Yes. I am aware of my current state. I am focused. I am experiencing this moment.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-lying-conscious?fbclid=IwVERDUAP_C7BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR6lL2DSFShUkY05eSBewNY3TVRTJfMpkuajo1Xxl2-fNKi8iHFlb5MkjNVSiw_aem_niOI8GhMXyeyaGsMMcGoXA
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.dna.fi/dnabusiness/blogi/-/blogs/is-finland-the-next-ai-forerunner-ai-finland-s-director-shares-the-tools-for-global-growth?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=LAA-artikkeli-is-finland-the-next-ai-forerunner-ai-finland-s-director-shares-the-tools-for-global-growth&utm_campaign=P_LAA_26-05-09_artikkelikampanja_enkku_&fbclid=IwdGRjcAP_C_5leHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqy1OhTyafHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHq47_7RJ7T7yIC6ZBUBhPa2xJpCtdbl5Ye0Qz60wdrwtT-L1riV5WJoC6acu_aem_STUVkxRKOYphMnpGd26wUQ&utm_id=120239630109890556&utm_term=120239630109910556
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/us-government-grok-nutrition?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP_yo5jbGNrA__KUGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHhDIvr24_fY9hWRFhAWsMwBjsBD-MXDMVsEIc3fAne4Yv9MTIgrM56GvShD-_aem_4g_YtGmaxhIIBHJaeAxohA
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1BqfKNc4bt/
ChatGPT valehtelee meille tavalla, joka hivelee egoa, mutta ei ole hyvästä meille.
Olet ehkä huomannut miten kun syötät tekoälylle huonoimmankin saamasi idean, ja se vastaa lähes aina kehuen sen maasta taivaisiin, tai ainakin löytäen siitä jonkin hyvän puolen.
Se tottakai tuntuu hyvältä. Tulee tunne, että nyt ollaan asian ytimessä. Mutta todellisuudessa olet juuri palkannut maailman pahimman jees-miehen.
Haemme luonnostaan hyväksyntää, emme haastamista. Kun näytämme luonnosta kollegalle, toivomme kehuja, emme punakynää.
Mutta jatkuva myötäily on myrkkyä.
Jos kaikki ideasi menevät läpi sellaisenaan, rimasi on joko liian matalalla tai kukaan ei uskalla olla sinulle rehellinen. Oikeasti tarvitset sparraajan, joka ei pelkää pahoittaa mieltäsi. Jonka tavoite on lopputuloksen laatu, ei sinun mielialasi.
Tekoäly osaa tämän, mutta vain jos ymmärrät pyytää sitä. Mutta salaisuus on nimenomaan siinä, että se pitää erikseen laittaa olemaan kriittinen.
Ja jos ohjeet tähän kuulostavat hyvältä, tein videon jolla näytän viisi tehokikkaa tekoälyn käyttöön ja siellä on mukana erityisesti tekniikoita, millä käsket tekoälyn lopettamaan mielistelyn ja aloittamaan oikean sparrauksen. https://youtu.be/QsCfXzA5w9I
Tomi Engdahl says:
Monkey Seedance
New AI Video Generator Is So Impressive That It’s Scaring Hollywood
“I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/seedance-ai-video-generator-scaring-hollywood?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP_1qtjbGNrA__Wk2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHhz0zF8iYN6gVay1JL88z24BDvrjYLP5VxRWx2LlD3HnQhYtUfFqy1U0eogo_aem_iUOBPqyFr3VnvMIGxNRxIA
Text-to-video generating tools have made tremendous leaps in a few short years.
We went from a horrifying clip of actor Will Smith’s contorted face temporarily merging with a bowl of spaghetti in 2023 to a far more realistic clip of him enjoying a plate of pasta — including a soundtrack of unnerving squelching and chomping sounds — a mere two years later.
Now, TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance has once again upped the ante with the latest version of its Seedance AI video generating tool. It didn’t take long for photorealistic footage of “Lord of the Rings” clips, rapper Kanye West and ex-wife Kim Kardashian facing off in a dramatic Mandarin language movie scene, and of course Will Smith battling a ferocious spaghetti monster to go viral on social media.
The impressive technological feat appears to have shaken Hollywood, with “Deadpool” screenwriter Rhett Reese lamenting on X that “I hate to say it” but it’s “likely over for us.”
Reese was responding to a highly realistic clip of actors Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise engaging in hand-to-hand combat on top of a partially broken bridge.
The advent of powerful generative AI-based video tools has driven the entertainment industry into a panic, with actors warning that they could one day be replaced altogether. Highly influential voices in the industry have come out against the tech in full force, warning of the death of human agency and creativity.
As the BBC reports, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) was outraged that ByteDance’s latest tool was allowing people to generate clips of high-profile celebrities at all.
“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of US copyrighted works on a massive scale,” the MPA’s chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement.
“Everything I’ve seen from this model (Seedance 2) is a copyright violation,” Roblox product manager Peter Yang tweeted.
In short, the latest AI release once again highlights a highly contentious battle over copyright and the agency of human performers in an entertainment landscape that’s changing with each new AI release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn’t be bothered to write?”
Copy That
There’s a Grim New Expression: “AI;DR”
“Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn’t be bothered to write?”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/aidr-meaning?fbclid=IwdGRjcAQAFOdjbGNrBAAU1mV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHpMJ5MyWXHpJe7i4RITJbjXAjHwi6oGR7oPDyTbXrLHP1YRFczU58qYOuXIB_aem_lV1SbTN1yqcbdd2gSThxvQ
The internet is so overrun with AI that anywhere you go, you run the risk of accidentally stepping into a puddle of slop. If only there were a gallant gentleman always at hand to drape their coat over these muddy obstacles so you could avoid ruining your day.
It’s not quite on that level, but some netizens are proposing a new term to call out AI slop so other people can avoid wasting their time — or to just make fun of the person peddling it: “AI;DR,” or “ai;dr,” short for “AI, didn’t read.”
This is of course a riff on the classic internet slang “TL;DR” — “too long; didn’t read” — which is used to both introduce a summary of a lengthy block of text or proclaim that it’s being ignored for its lengthiness. Now, the latter usage is being repurposed against AI.
We’re not ready to christen AI;DR a word of the year yet, but it does appear to be gaining moderate traction online, after a recent post on Threads drew attention to it.
“We all need to adopt that right quick,” one user on Bluesky said of the phrase, in a semi-viral post.
TL;DR: AI;DR calls out AI slop and warns other humans not to bother.