The Top 10 AI Consumer Trends That Will Define 2026
As we stand on the precipice of 2026, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant promise—it’s the defining force reshaping how consumers live, work, shop, and interact with the world. After spending 2025 traveling from Saudi Arabia to Columbus, Ohio, helping companies understand AI’s transformative power, I’ve witnessed firsthand how this technology is fundamentally changing the consumer landscape.
The gap between imagination and reality has collapsed. What once required specialized skills, significant capital, or access to talented teams can now be accomplished by anyone with an idea and an AI tool. This democratization of creation is the most profound shift I’ve seen in my career, and it’s just beginning.
## The New Consumer Reality: Generation AI
Every technological revolution births a new generation. Millennials became digital natives with the Internet. Gen Z grew up as the iPhone generation, wielding social media as their voice. Now, **Gen Alpha is emerging as the AI generation**—they will never know a world without artificial intelligence.
This isn’t just another tech trend. Gen Alpha will interact with AI the same way they interact with people. They’ll share their deepest fears with AI chatbots, create feature-length films starring their siblings, and build solutions to problems we haven’t imagined yet. This fundamental shift in human-technology relationships will rewire society in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
## Why AI Is Different From Every Technology Before It
The rate of AI improvement is unprecedented. **The length of tasks AI can accomplish is doubling every seven months.** If AI performs a task “just okay” today, it will excel at that same task tomorrow. This exponential growth curve means that dismissing AI based on today’s limitations is like refusing to stream Netflix because internet video was choppy in 2002.
Large language models like ChatGPT have become the “crowbar technology” for AI adoption—the same way America Online introduced mainstream consumers to the internet. Just one year ago, the smartest AI model had an IQ score of 96. Today’s leading models score 142, rivaling Rhodes scholars. Imagine if your Uncle Larry went from barely stringing sentences together at last year’s Thanksgiving to working at NASA and planning a Mars mission next week. That’s the pace of AI evolution.
## The 10 Consumer AI Trends Reshaping 2026
### 1. AI-Powered Job Displacement Goes Mainstream
Big tech companies have already cut tens of thousands of employees in 2025, and while CEOs rarely admit it publicly, **AI-driven automation is the primary catalyst**. These cuts happened during a record-high stock market—imagine what happens during the next recession.
This isn’t about celebrating job losses; it’s about facing reality. Many jobs that exist today simply don’t need to exist tomorrow. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle. Companies will increasingly adopt AI to do more with less, eliminating layers of management and automating knowledge work.
The economic ripple effects will be significant. With record-high defaults on car loans, personal loans at 15-year highs, and credit card debt mounting, consumers are already struggling. **2026 will likely bring a recessionary environment** where cautious consumers tighten their purse strings, particularly on discretionary purchases.
Yet there’s a paradox: while some struggle, we’re witnessing the greatest wealth transfer in history. Over the next 20 years, **$84 trillion will pass from baby boomers to younger generations**. When capital moves from a generation with a scarcity mindset to one with a YOLO mentality toward money, we’ll see an unprecedented spending boom—just not in 2026.
### 2. The Internet Gets a New Front Door
For two decades, Google has been the internet’s primary gateway. That’s changing rapidly. **50% of consumers already use AI-powered search**, and 20-50% of traditional search traffic is at risk.
The shift isn’t just about where people search—it’s about how they search. Unlike traditional SEO, where ranking improvements could take years, **AI can elevate an unknown company to top recommendations in days**. This will create dramatic winners and losers across industries.
Consider this: when you ask an AI for recommendations, you’re typically much further down the purchase funnel than with traditional search. Instead of typing “pickleball racket,” you’re having a conversation that leads to “recommendations for a pickleball racket for a beginner female.” This specificity means **content optimization for AI requires deeper, more detailed information** than traditional SEO ever demanded.
Google isn’t disappearing—they’ve pivoted masterfully with Gemini, potentially the best large language model available. But the rules of digital discovery are being completely rewritten.
### 3. Chat-Based Shopping Becomes the Norm
As consumers increasingly use AI for research, the traditional e-commerce experience is evolving into **conversational commerce**. Why click through multiple pages when you can have a dialogue that understands your needs, preferences, and constraints?
We’re already seeing this transformation. ChatGPT now integrates with Etsy, enabling checkout directly within the chat interface. In 2026, this will explode across platforms. Shopify’s millions of merchants will integrate with large language models, allowing consumers to research, discuss, and purchase without ever leaving the conversation.
The traditional consumer journey—discover through mass media, research on Google, purchase on Amazon—is collapsing into a single AI-powered interaction. Over time, these systems will remember your children’s ages, your shoe size, and your preferences, making shopping faster and more personalized than ever before.
### 4. AI-Powered Creative Takes Center Stage
I spent 20 years in advertising, so I understand traditional creatives’ skepticism about AI. But consider this: **500,000 young people gather annually in Las Vegas for the Electric Daisy Carnival to watch DJs play music made entirely by computers**. No guitars, no drums, no traditional instruments—yet the experience moves them emotionally.
The idea that consumers won’t be inspired by AI-created content ignores this fundamental truth: people care about how content makes them feel, not how it was made.
The fidelity of AI-generated imagery has improved dramatically. Mid Journey’s version 1 created images with six or seven fingers per hand. Version 5.1 produces photorealistic results, and version 7 is in development. What would these tools have cost five years ago? Creating a single professional image required casting directors, makeup artists, photographers, lighting specialists, and set designers. Now it requires a well-crafted prompt.
For the real estate listing music video I created the night before presenting to 5,000 realtors, I transformed a random Zillow listing into a country music video—complete with AI-generated vocals in a genre I don’t even enjoy. **1,300 people requested instructions on how to replicate it.** That’s the power of accessible creativity.
### 5. Hyper-Personalization Becomes Baseline Expectation
We’ve discussed hyper-personalization for years, yet most companies still employ one-to-many email strategies. In the age of AI, **you should never send the same email to more than one person**. You should have an audience of one, multiplied millions of times.
At Suzy, our Signals product delivers hyper-personalized email newsletters featuring the recipient’s picture and custom-built content based on their role, company, LinkedIn activity, and professional interests. We mine data to find market signals specifically relevant to each individual.
This is just the beginning. Soon, every TV commercial will be personalized. As soon as you enter your email on a website, the entire experience should transform based on what’s known about you. **The technology exists now.** In 2026, sophisticated companies will make this standard practice, and over time, consumers will come to expect it.
### 6. Consumers Learn AI at Home First
Many large organizations restrict employee AI access due to privacy, security, and IT concerns, creating a paradox: companies want AI-literate employees but prevent them from gaining hands-on experience.
The solution? **Consumers will learn AI at home**, the same way the iPhone achieved mainstream adoption before infiltrating the enterprise. Employees will build personal health bots analyzing 25 years of medical data, tutoring agents for their children’s math homework, and financial management tools for tax preparation.
This “bring your own AI” trend mirrors the BYOD (bring your own device) movement that made smartphones essential business tools. Once consumers experience AI’s power personally, they’ll demand similar capabilities at work.
I recommend companies give each employee $250 to build something with AI for themselves. The process matters more than the output. Until you’ve spent hours building something with AI, you can’t truly understand what’s possible.
### 7. Creators Pivot to AI Tech Deals
We’ve seen celebrities successfully launch physical products—Dr. Dre with Beats, George Clooney with Casamigos, Kim Kardashian with Skims. Building products has become commoditized through efficient supply chains, making celebrity endorsement the primary differentiator.
**The same dynamic is emerging in tech.** Building AI applications is increasingly commoditized, meaning celebrity distribution and trust become the differentiating factors. Ryan Sirhan, a major real estate influencer, created his own AI sales training tool. Is it superior to every competitor? Not necessarily. But he has an audience that trusts him.
Expect more celebrities to become tech entrepreneurs in 2026, lending their names, audiences, and authenticity to AI products that others build but they exclusively promote.
### 8. AI Becomes Central to Longevity and Preventative Health
The quantified self movement is accelerating. **Eight Sleep mattresses measure sleep quality, Apple Watches track heart rate, Oura rings monitor body temperature**, and new tools like Tao AI calculate caloric content from food photos.
Pre-AI, these data streams existed in silos. Now they can be synthesized with personal health history and every medical study ever published, putting unprecedented control in consumers’ hands.
I created a personal health bot trained on 25 years of medical data—MRIs, blood tests, X-rays, and doctor’s notes. My first question: “If Matt Britton dies in five years, what’s the most likely cause?” The answer was startlingly specific, citing blood markers from a decade ago and supporting research. That personalization is impossible without AI.
This trend extends beyond individual health. I recently spoke at a retirement planning conference where this realization emerged: **if you have comprehensive health data on consumers, you can estimate longevity and calculate retirement savings needs** with unprecedented accuracy.
### 9. The Internet’s New Front Door Requires AI Content Optimization
Traditional SEO is being replaced by **AI content optimization**. The specificity required is greater, the timeline for results is faster, and the stakes are higher. Companies that master this transition will thrive; those that don’t will become invisible to AI-powered discovery.
### 10. AI Hits American Classrooms
Schools like the newly announced Alpha School are “redefining education” by placing AI at the center of learning. This addresses a fundamental problem: **we’re educating students for a knowledge economy that’s ending**.
For decades, success meant memorization and regurgitation—cramming information and proving retention through tests. But AI excels at knowledge retention. What matters now are skills the World Economic Forum identifies as critical: analytical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, resilience, and flexibility.
Most university professors still use textbooks written before ChatGPT existed. Parents must take initiative. I show my 4-year-old daughter that any story she imagines can become a video before bedtime, demonstrating that her creativity has no bounds.
**Students, particularly high schoolers, will drive this transformation** more than schools will. The consumerization of AI in education is inevitable.
## Preparing for an AI-Powered Future
Today is the worst AI will ever be. If it performs adequately today, it will excel tomorrow. The rate of improvement is 100x faster than the digital revolution. Your experience with AI six months ago is irrelevant to its capabilities today.
The future belongs to those who identify problems worth solving, not those who know how to solve them. The specialized skills that defined the knowledge economy—coding, contract writing, tax preparation—are moving “under the hood,” like ISO and F-stop settings on smartphone cameras.
**What matters now is knowing where to point the camera.**
As CEO of Suzy, I’m doubling down on the human voice precisely because AI makes consumer insights more critical than ever. In a world changing faster than our closely-held beliefs about consumer preferences, understanding authentic human emotion and perspective becomes the competitive advantage.
2026 won’t be easy. We’ll likely take one brutal step backward—economically and socially—before taking many steps forward. But those who future-proof themselves, who learn to build with AI, who lean into creativity and critical thinking, will emerge as the winners in this new era.
The AI revolution isn’t coming. It’s here. The question isn’t whether to adapt, but how quickly you’ll embrace the transformation.
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*Matt Britton is CEO of Suzy, a leading consumer research platform, and author of “Generation AI.” He speaks globally on consumer trends, AI transformation, and the future of business. Connect with Matt at [mattbritton.com](https://mattbritton.com).*
