Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage.
Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026.
The bubble won’t pop
While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bubble, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says those fears are overblown and the AI trade will actually get bigger in 2026. Ives says the consumer AI revolution has not truly begun, and the expected rise of robotics in the years to come, as well as the long runway for corporate use and global expansion, will drive an ongoing tech bull market.
“This AI revolution is just beginning today, and we believe tech stocks and the AI winners should be bought, given our view that this is Year 3 of what will be a 10-year cycle of this AI revolution build-out,” he writes. “We expect tech stocks to be up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI revolution hits its stride.”
A leap in “lazy thinking”
Not all of the predictions around AI in 2026 are quite so bullish. Gartner sends up a red flag about people’s growing dependence on chatbots and their automatic acceptance of whatever those devices spew out. Through 2026, the analytics firm predicts, there will be an “atrophy of critical-thinking skills due to Gen AI use.” That, it says, will push half of global organizations to require “AI-free” skills assessments.
“As automation accelerates, the ability to think independently and creatively will become both increasingly rare—and increasingly valuable,” Gartner writes.
Gen AI will move from stand-alone sites to search engines
Generative AI chatbots are how many people interact with AI. They don’t require any tech knowledge (although the more you know about how to phrase prompts, the more efficient they are), and they’re free.
For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, you generally have to visit a stand-alone website to access them. In 2026 and beyond, however, Deloitte says that more people will begin to use generative AI that’s embedded within existing applications, like search engines. “In terms of daily use, accessing Gen AI within a search engine [when a search yields a synthesis of results] will be 300% more common than using any stand-alone Gen AI tool,” the consulting firm writes.
Rise of the robots
While humanoid robots in 2026 may not reach the levels Elon Musk predicts, we are likely to see a substantial increase in AI-driven robotics, Deloitte says. The number of industrial robots is expected to reach 5.5 million.
That’s the beginning of a wave—which could see annual shipments begin to increase until they reach 1 million per year by 2030. That increase, the firm says, will be driven by labor shortages and “exponential advancements in computing power.”
A legal tsunami
AI firms are already facing a number of lawsuits, most prominently involving cases in which plaintiffs argue that AI drove people to take their own lives. That has put a spotlight on the lack of guardrails around the industry. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in setting firm parameters for AI companies. (Some states are attempting to do so, however.)
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, there will be more than 2,000 “death by AI” legal claims. The upside of this tragedy, it continues, is that it could finally push regulators to focus on safety issues.
“Black box systems—AI models whose decision-making processes are opaque or difficult to interpret—can misfire, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance, and public safety,” the analytics firm writes. “Explainability, ethical design, and clean data will become nonnegotiable.”
