If there is one defining feature of the AI moment, it is speed. In 2025, a year already feels too long to make sense of technological change. New models, products and interfaces are being released every few weeks, often reshaping assumptions before they have time to settle. And yet, despite the frenzy, AI has not fully delivered the sweeping efficiency gains once promised. This tension between promise and payoff frames what 2026 is likely to bring.
What 2025 Got Right — and What It Didn’t
AI is no longer experimental. It is now embedded across industries and daily workflows, from content creation and coding to customer support and data analysis. Individual users have also found practical uses, even if not always transformative ones.
However, some anticipated breakthroughs — autonomous AI agents acting independently, AI-designed hardware, and radically simplified dashboards — have arrived more slowly. The bottleneck has not been compute alone, but human adaptation: organisations, users, and regulations are still catching up.
The Internet’s New Front Door
One of the most consequential shifts underway is how people access information. The link-based search model popularised by is giving way to conversational, AI-driven interfaces that deliver answers directly, without clicks.
AI browsers such as ChatGPT’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet are early indicators of this transition. They do not merely point users to content; they synthesise it, personalise it, and allow follow-up questions. This “zero-click” experience threatens the ad-driven economics of the web, even as it offers users a far more intuitive way to learn.
Google’s response — AI-generated overviews embedded directly into search — suggests that by 2026, pulling information from the web will replace pushing users towards websites as the dominant model of internet use.
AI Devices and the Post-App World
The browser is already the most used application on phones and laptops. In 2026, it may also become the operating system’s brain. Hardware companies are likely to centre devices around AI-first browsers rather than apps.
This opens the door to AI-powered devices that behave less like tools and more like assistants — summarising days, managing schedules, prioritising communications, and acting without explicit prompts. It would not be surprising if companies like OpenAI or Anthropic move into consumer hardware.
If smartphones created the app economy, generative AI may dismantle it, ushering in a post-app era where tasks are completed through conversation. Interaction may increasingly happen through voice, earbuds or smart glasses, with screens becoming secondary.
Rewinding Life: Memory as a Service
An extension of AI devices is persistent memory. Products such as Google’s Android XR Glasses hint at a future where AI passively records what users see and hear, converting daily life into searchable, actionable data.
Such systems could remind users of forgotten conversations, missed commitments, or contextual details. The privacy implications are enormous, but so are the benefits — particularly for productivity, accessibility, and cognitive assistance. In 2026, AI copilots may not just live on screens but quietly accompany users through physical space.
From Single Agents to AI Orchestration
While 2025 saw experimentation with AI agents, 2026 is likely to be about coordination. Instead of relying on one assistant, users and firms will orchestrate multiple agents — possibly from different providers — to handle complex workflows.
This multi-agent approach is especially attractive to businesses managing fragmented data, vendors and departments. Platforms enabling such orchestration could become core enterprise infrastructure. Market estimates, including those from Deloitte, suggest the autonomous AI agent market could reach $8.5 billion by 2026.
Physical AI Moves Into the Real World
AI’s most visible leap may come off the screen. Autonomous taxis from already offer safer-feeling rides than human-driven alternatives in some cities. Their success could accelerate autonomous public transport and drone delivery, particularly in environments difficult for humans to access.
Robotics is the next frontier. Companies like Tesla, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI are developing robots for factories and homes — folding clothes, assisting with chores, and boosting industrial productivity. The constraint is cost: widespread adoption will depend on prices falling below roughly $50,000 per unit.
The Common Thread: Less Friction, More Human Time
Across browsers, devices, agents and robots, the unifying theme is friction reduction. AI’s promise in 2026 is not spectacle but invisibility — working in the background, anticipating needs, and freeing up human attention.
What to Note for Prelims?
- Shift from link-based search to AI-generated answers.
- Rise of AI-first browsers and devices.
- Growth of autonomous AI agents and orchestration platforms.
- Expansion of physical AI through robotics and self-driving systems.
What to Note for Mains?
- Analyse how AI is reshaping internet business models.
- Discuss the implications of AI-driven automation on employment.
- Examine privacy concerns linked to persistent AI memory.
- Evaluate whether AI’s productivity gains match its investment hype.
Looking Ahead
The fear of an AI bubble has not disappeared, but neither has momentum. What 2026 is likely to reveal is whether AI can move from excitement to endurance — from novelty to infrastructure. If it does, the biggest change may not be what AI does for us, but how little we notice it doing so at all.
