Every January brings a wave of bold predictions about artificial intelligence. Most of them age badly. So rather than guess which company will “win” the year, we looked at the shifts that are already under way and are likely to change how ordinary people and businesses use AI over the next twelve months.
Updated September 2026: we updated the EU AI Act timeline after the 2026 amendments and added sources for the trends on agents, on-device AI, search and energy use.
1. Assistants that do things, not just say things
The biggest change in 2026 is the move from chatbots that answer questions to agents that carry out multi-step tasks: filling in forms, researching a topic across dozens of pages, editing files, or working through a to-do list inside other apps. The major AI labs all spent last year building this capability into their products; OpenAI’s deep research, launched in February 2025, was an early example.
The honest picture is mixed. Agents are genuinely useful for tasks with clear goals and easy-to-check results. They still stumble on long, messy jobs where one wrong step compounds into a bad outcome. Expect this year to be about narrowing that gap, with better ways to supervise, approve and undo what an agent does.
2. Smaller models doing more of the work
Not every task needs the largest model available. Companies are increasingly routing simple requests to small, fast, cheap models and saving the heavyweight systems for hard problems. For users this mostly shows up as speed: quicker replies and lower prices on paid plans and APIs.
3. AI that runs on your device
Phone and laptop makers now ship chips designed for machine learning, and they want to use them. Many of Microsoft’s newer Windows AI features need a Copilot+ PC with a dedicated neural processor, and Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, or a Mac or iPad with an M1 chip or later. On-device AI keeps more of your data local, works offline and responds instantly. The trade-off is capability: local models are smaller, so the most demanding requests still go to the cloud. Watch for more features that quietly split the work between your device and a server.
4. Multimodal by default
Text-only assistants are becoming the exception. Today’s leading systems can read images, documents and screenshots, listen and respond in natural speech, and in some cases generate images and video. The practical upshot is simple: you can point your camera at a problem, or share your screen, instead of describing it in words.
5. The search box is changing
Search engines now answer many questions with AI-written summaries, and AI chat apps have added live web search. That changes how people find information and how publishers get traffic. A Pew Research Center study found that Google users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. For users, the key habit to build is checking the sources behind a summary, especially for health, money and legal questions.
6. The cost of compute becomes a headline issue
Training and running large models takes enormous amounts of electricity and specialized hardware. Data center construction, power supply and chip availability are now mainstream business and political stories. The International Energy Agency projects that data centers’ electricity use will more than double, from about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 to around 945 by 2030, more than Japan uses today. This matters to consumers indirectly: it affects prices, which features companies choose to offer for free, and local debates over new facilities.
7. Regulation gets real deadlines
The European Union’s AI Act entered into force in 2024 and its obligations are being phased in over several years. Transparency duties, such as telling people they are talking to a chatbot, apply from August 2026. In July 2026 an amendment known as the AI Omnibus pushed the main high-risk rules back to December 2027, and to August 2028 for AI built into regulated products; our AI Act explainer has the full timeline. Elsewhere, governments are taking a patchwork approach, from voluntary frameworks to state-level laws. If your business builds or deploys AI, 2026 is the year to understand which rules apply to you.
8. Trust becomes the product
As AI tools become more capable, the question shifts from “can it do this?” to “can I rely on it?” Features that show sources, explain reasoning, protect privacy and let you correct mistakes will increasingly separate good products from impressive demos.
What this means for you You do not need to chase every launch. Pick one or two tools that fit your daily work, learn them well, and build the habit of verifying anything important. Those skills will carry over no matter which products lead the market by December.
We will be covering each of these trends throughout the year, with practical guides, comparisons and explainers. If there is a topic you want us to dig into, our editors read every message sent through the contact page.
Sources
- Introducing deep research, OpenAI, February 2025
- Copilot+ PCs developer guide, Microsoft Learn
- How to get Apple Intelligence, Apple Support
- Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, Pew Research Center, July 2025
- Energy and AI: Executive summary, International Energy Agency, 2025
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act), EUR-Lex
- EU AI Omnibus enters into force, amending the AI Act, White & Case, July 2026
