The Top 10 Consumer AI Trends That Will Define 2026: Insights from My AdWeek CES Keynote
When I stepped onto the stage at AdWeek's CES event to address leading marketing and technology professionals, I had one mission: to cut through the noise and reveal what consumer AI trends will actually matter in 2026. Not the hype. Not the buzzwords. The real transformations that will reshape how we live, work, and consume.
After spending over 50,000 hours building AI solutions—from creating a personal health bot trained on 25 years of my medical data to developing enterprise-grade AI systems for Fortune 500 companies—I've learned that the future isn't coming. It's already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet.
Let me share what I revealed at CES about the consumer AI landscape ahead.
The Creative Revolution Is Here (And It Happened Overnight)
I opened my keynote with a music video I created at midnight in my hotel room the night before presenting to 5,000 Nationwide Insurance employees. Three years ago, producing that video would have required a songwriter, a band, a video producer, a graphic designer, and weeks of coordination. Instead, I built it alone in under an hour.
The video featured custom lyrics, animated graphics with the Nationwide logo flying across cityscapes, and a complete musical composition—all generated through AI tools. When people say "AI can't build creative" or "AI isn't going to change the agency landscape," they're simply not paying attention to what's already possible.
Here's the critical insight: AI capabilities are doubling every seven months. If AI can do something "just okay" today, it will do that same task in a mind-blowing way within a year. If you see AI creating something that isn't quite there yet, don't dismiss it. Build your strategy accordingly, because that capability is coming faster than you think.
Understanding the Generational AI Divide
Every generation that I've lived through in business has been defined by a transformative technology. Millennials (now ages 29-44) ushered in the internet. Gen Z brought us the iPhone and social media, putting the power of the internet in everyone's hands. Now Gen Alpha—currently ages 0-15—will be defined by AI.
This generation will never know a world without artificial intelligence. They'll never experience technology they can't talk to like a human. While many parents find it creepy that their children are developing intimate relationships with AI chatbots, this is Gen Alpha's complete worldview. They're growing up in a world where conversing with AI is as natural as texting a friend.
Yet despite AI's accessibility, adoption still skews younger. Gen Z has nearly double the AI penetration of Baby Boomers. This represents a massive opportunity. Using AI effectively only requires the ability to talk or text—skills every generation possesses. The real challenge is overcoming the perception that AI is just for "tech whiz kids" rather than a tool as fundamental as email or smartphones.
The Three Levels of AI Usage (And Why Most People Are Stuck at Level One)
During my keynote, I broke down the spectrum of AI adoption that I see across industries:
Level One: AI as a Tool (90% of users) This is simple question-and-answer usage: "Where should I travel in the Caribbean?" or "What's the best recipe for lasagna?" It's using AI like Google—call and response, nothing more.
Level Two: Workflows and Automation (9% of users) This involves creating automated processes. For example, after my presentation, attendees scanned a QR code that triggered an automated workflow: it identified who they were, wrote a customized email, and sent out my presentation materials automatically. This level requires understanding how to build and connect tools.
Level Three: Agentic AI (1% of users) This is where the real transformation happens. Instead of following deterministic steps (A to B to C), agentic AI makes decisions and takes actions you didn't explicitly program. In my email example, an agentic system might notice that a recipient lives in Los Angeles and that I'll be there in February, then proactively send them a lunch invitation.
The distinction is crucial: workflows are deterministic—you know exactly what will happen. Agents have autonomy and access to tools, enabling them to accomplish things you didn't even plan. This is why the agent revolution excites technologists—once you give AI the right tools and autonomy, it starts solving problems you didn't know existed.
My Framework for AI Mastery: Start with a Personal Problem
I run a software company called Suzy with over 300 employees. When ChatGPT launched, my instinct was to hand AI tools to my 85-person engineering team. I waited. Nothing happened.
So I made a pivotal decision: I took AI implementation back into my own hands. But more importantly, I decided that before using AI to solve business problems, I would use it to solve a personal problem. Why? Because problems close to your heart are the ones you're most likely to solve.
I'm 50 years old with both older and younger children (that's a different story), and I want to stay alive as long as possible. So I spent seven days building a personal health bot trained on 25 years of medical data—MRIs, X-rays, blood tests, doctor's notes, everything I could find in file cabinets and external hard drives.
Once complete, I asked my first question: "If I'm going to die in five years, what's the most likely cause?"
The answer freaked me out. But here's what made this powerful: it wasn't a generic WebMD response that tells everyone they're dying. This was trained exclusively on my data—my health markers, my family history, my specific situation. When I asked "Why?" and "What can I do about it?" and "What about 10 years?" the bot provided personalized, actionable insights.
This process taught me the framework everyone needs to adopt AI effectively:
Identify the problem you want to solve (not the tools you want to use)
Gather the relevant data that can help deliver the solution
Envision what a tool should look like to achieve your goal
Build it step by step, asking AI to guide you through the process
Here's the key: I told ChatGPT, "Give me step-by-step directions for building a health bot. Do not give me step two until I tell you step one is done." This prevents overwhelm. You focus on one step at a time. By step 43, I looked back and realized not just that I'd built something powerful, but that each step taught me techniques I could apply to other projects.
Trend #1: AI-Powered Job Displacement Goes Mainstream in 2026
This isn't a trend I'm happy about, but it's one we must acknowledge. In 2026, I believe AI-powered job displacement will go mainstream as companies realize what Big Tech already knows: automation drives efficiency and cuts costs.
Job openings and hires in the US are already dropping. Younger people feel increasingly disenfranchised, unable to afford homes—economic pressures that are already reshaping our political landscape.
The saving grace? The Great Wealth Transfer. Over the next two decades, $84 trillion will pass from Baby Boomers to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. These generations have fundamentally different relationships with capital. Boomers, shaped by the Great Depression and World War II, view money through a lens of scarcity. Gen Z, raised on GameStop stocks and NFTs, couldn't spend money fast enough. When $84 trillion shifts to people with this mindset, we may see economic tailwinds that counteract some job displacement.
The imperative is clear: future-proof yourself by developing the skills I'm describing in this article. Don't wait for your employer to train you—take AI into your own hands.
Trend #2: The Internet Gets a New Front Door
In 2025, over 80% of my inbound requests for public speaking came from ChatGPT. The year before, 87% came from Google. In one year, the primary discovery mechanism completely shifted.
This represents a fundamental change in consumer behavior. When people search via ChatGPT or other AI platforms, they're much further down the conversion funnel than traditional search. On Google, someone searches "best pickleball racket." On ChatGPT, the AI asks contextual questions: Is it for a child or adult? Beginner or advanced player? Indoor or outdoor use?
For brands, this means content strategy must evolve. Instead of broad content like "best pickleball rackets," you need highly specific content: "best pickleball racket for 8-year-old girls," "best pickleball racket for advanced outdoor players," and so on. AI models surface content that matches specific queries, so specificity becomes your competitive advantage.
Trend #3: Chat-Based Shopping Emerges as the New Standard
Data from Black Friday and Cyber Monday revealed that nearly 80% of consumers used AI as part of their buying journey. While few completed purchases through AI, that's changing rapidly.
AI models know so much about you that they're becoming true shopping assistants. Amazon is investing heavily in Rufus AI, their shopping chatbot. But "over time" in the AI world isn't six years—it's six months.
At my keynote, I asked how many people had made a purchase through AI. Two hands went up. I predicted that next year, 50% would raise their hands. This represents a seismic shift for every e-commerce provider and anyone selling products online.
Trend #4: AI-Powered Creative Takes Center Stage
Remember that music video I created at midnight? Let me give you another example. I recently spoke to 5,000 real estate brokers and wanted to demonstrate how they could transform listings. So the night before, in my Dallas hotel room, I grabbed a random local listing and turned it into a music video:
"On Gold Cup Way in Houston, the palm trees sway / Steeplechase living where the backyard steals the day / Waterfall flowing, swim-up bar glowing / No rear neighbors inside now, all this information keeps on showing..."
I received 1,600 emails from brokers asking how I did it. This illustrates how everything is turning into entertainment and how accessible creative production has become.
Look at the evolution of image generation: Version 1 of these tools produced people with six fingers on one hand and seven on the other. That was 18 months ago. Now Mid Journey is on Version 8, and the fidelity is remarkable. Text-to-video has achieved nearly the same quality. If we've come this far in 18 months, where will we be in another year?
Trend #5: Hyper-Personalization Becomes a Baseline Expectation
Hyper-personalization has been a marketing buzzword for years, but it hasn't been truly achievable until now. I created an email newsletter called FutureProof that takes consumer information and hyper-personalizes emails based on who you are, your interests, what you post on LinkedIn.
There should be no more one-to-many email newsletters. Everything should be one-to-one based on individual recipients. Every experience should be personalized. This isn't a premium feature anymore—it's becoming a baseline expectation.
Trend #6: Consumers Must Learn AI in the Home
Brands face intense pressure to adopt AI, but their employees often don't know how to use it effectively. Why? They can't practice in an unencumbered fashion due to data security, privacy concerns, and risk controls at work.
The solution: Take AI into your own hands at home. Build a math tutor for your eight-year-old. Create a tool to organize your family schedule. These might seem superfluous, but it's not about what you're building—it's about understanding the process of building without constraints.
Once your mind is trained through personal projects, you'll think differently when opportunities arise in professional settings. This isn't just about writing better prompts. It's about developing problem-solving frameworks that unlock AI's true potential.
Trend #7: Creators Turn Their Sights Toward AI Tech Deals
Ryan Serhant, a massive real estate influencer, launched a tool called Sell It to help real estate brokers improve their sales skills. His tool has parity with hundreds or thousands of similar products. Yet it's highly successful. Why? Distribution.
Just as Kim Kardashian launched SKIMS, George Clooney backed Casamigos tequila, and Dr. Dre built Beats—creators with distribution are attaching their names to white-label technology and creating massive valuations.
I could connect the most famous doctor you can think of with my health bot concept and create a multi-billion dollar valuation tomorrow because they have the distribution, the name, the brand. This trend will accelerate as manufacturing and technology development become commoditized while distribution remains the differentiator.
Trend #8: AI Becomes a Pillar of Longevity and Preventative Health
We're entering the era of the "quantified self." Between Eight Sleep mattresses, Oura rings, Apple Watches, and countless other devices, we're collecting unprecedented data about our bodies. The difference now is we can actually do something about it.
People will become increasingly obsessed with collecting body data to drive health decisions. I recently spoke to the retirement industry and told them this should be central to their strategy—how long you live directly correlates with your health information, which directly impacts retirement planning.
Consumers will have personal dashboards consolidating health data, personal data, and financial data—all helping them make better decisions and quantify their lives. We're already seeing this with Oura ring recovery scores. The next evolution will be deeply personalized health management systems.
Trend #9: AI Hits American Classrooms (And We Can't Afford to Fall Behind)
The Alpha School in Miami and New York represents a new model: AI-native private education. It's expensive and hard to get into. Bill Ackman, the famous private equity executive, pulled his child from a prestigious New York private school to enroll them there.
They probably won't get everything right the first time, but in China, they're already implementing AI education for children as young as six. Three-quarters of Chinese consumers trust AI, compared to less than one-third in the United States.
This matters beyond business—it extends to defense and every strategic sector. We cannot afford to lose the AI race with any nation. The implementation of AI in education will determine which countries lead in innovation for the next generation.
Trend #10: The End of the Knowledge Economy
Our education system—from kindergarten through college—is built on memorization and regurgitation. Cram information, spit it back out. This worked perfectly for the knowledge economy, where specialized expertise in taxes, law, radiology, or coding represented tremendous value.
But I believe we're entering the end of the knowledge economy. The defining skills of our era are creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. I don't need deep domain expertise anymore—I need soft skills that enable me to identify problems, gather relevant data, and build solutions.
This creates challenges for employers. As CEO of a software company with over 200 employees, we hired during the peak of the knowledge economy. We brought in people with specialized skill sets that matter less now that the light switch has turned on and the world changed more rapidly than at any point in history.
This is why incumbents struggle to compete with young, AI-native startups that don't carry legacy baggage. The World Economic Forum identifies the new workplace skills as analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, creative thinking, technological literacy, and systems-based thinking.
These skills are notoriously hard to teach, especially later in life. Have you ever tried to teach someone to "be creative"? It's not easy. People will need to reskill themselves—and that reskilling happens through the process I've outlined: building, failing, learning, and building again.
Taking Control of Your Future
I know we're in a scary time. Job security feels uncertain. The future of advertising, marketing, and countless industries seems murky. But by nature of you reading this article, you have the motivation to control your future.
You won't do it by waiting for permission or for your company to implement the perfect AI strategy. You'll do it by embracing these principles: identifying problems that matter, getting your hands on the keyboard, and building solutions one step at a time.
Start today. Pick a personal problem you care deeply about solving. Ask ChatGPT to guide you through building a solution, one step at a time. Don't worry about learning every AI tool—focus on the problem. The tools will reveal themselves through the building process.
The future isn't something that happens to us. It's something we create. And in 2026, the creators will be those who stopped watching from the sidelines and started building.
Because the future's already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. Make sure you're on the right side of that distribution.
Matt Britton is CEO of Suzy, a consumer research platform serving Fortune 500 companies, and author of the bestselling book "Generation AI." He speaks globally on AI and consumer trends. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit mattbritton.com to learn more about his work in AI and consumer behavior.
