Overview
- Executives describe 2026 as a “show me the money” phase, with boards prioritizing measurable returns and some investors warning that aggressive AI spending could bankrupt weaker players.
- Agentic AI is forecast to expand from demos to daily use, with proactive assistants handling end‑to‑end tasks and early commerce examples such as Visa’s envisioned “Buy for Me” checkout.
- Security researchers reported that widely installed browser extensions harvested complete AI chat histories for marketing resale, underscoring new data‑exposure risks across popular platforms.
- OpenAI’s GPT Image 1.5 rolled out to all ChatGPT users, generating images faster at lower API cost and enabling text‑based edits, a step that fuels worries over easily forged visuals.
- Platform chiefs and analysts say synthetic media and expanding automation will strain trust and reshape work, even as companies emphasize human oversight, governance and cybersecurity.