What Will 2026 Hold For AI?

2025 brought many surprises to those us observing the world of AI. To me, two stood out, one at the beginning of the year and another trend that became clearer as 2025 was in its final months.

The first took place on Jan. 20 of this year when the Chinese DeepSeek-R1 model was released and caused a splash — it soon topped app store charts and was supposedly built at a much lower cost than what cost to build newer models of ChatGPT and the like.

Many in the US and the West had been dismissive of China's ambitions and place in the AI race and the launch of DeepSeek-R1 was a milestone, and at the same time, the first salvo that demolished claims of Western superiority in AI.  

Since then, it has become clear that China is not all that far behind in the AI chip race too. China already leads in many AI use cases and arguably so the most important is the nation’s lead in the use of AI in manufacturing, but that's only one.

If there's one thing anyone can safely predict when it comes to AI trends for 2026, the continued rise of China in the AI stakes is all but certain. 

Another surprise from 2025 was Google dealing some solid punches to OpenAI and ChatGPT. Google has worked on foundational AI technologies for far longer than most companies and research labs, and while it supposedly already had chatbots when ChatGPT launched and walked away all the attention, adulation and seemed to have won the crown, 2025 proved that the AI race is still wide open.

Google's Nano Banana image generation and editing model was a wild success and propelled Google Gemini to the top of the app charts. In November Google dropped Gemini 3 which topped the benchmarks, prompting OpenAI to declare Code Red and get the company to drop everything and focus on getting a new version of ChatGPT to get OpenAI back in the lead.

Will it work? We'll know in 2026. Given the depth and extent of consumer usage that Google products have with hundreds of millions of users, and Gemini being embedded in them, it won't be easy to get Google on the mat again.

But as the Chinese showed us with DeepSeek, nothing is set in stone in this race. There might be dark horses that might end up leaving all of today's leaders in the dust.  

My hope is to see one of those dark horses from India. I know it’s wishful thinking, but with newer India-centric models poised to emerge in 2026 and beyond, especially those focused on Indian languages, 2026 should be a brighter year for AI from India.  

I think we will definitely see more AI-generated videos as the models become more powerful than ever. There are worrying possibilities there and the Indian government is also scrambling to ensure that AI-generated content is labelled as such.

But what worries me far more is the increasing use of AI chatbots for therapy. We saw some incredibly sad stories on this front in 2025, and I'm genuinely worried that 2026 might bring us many more, even as players like OpenAI are working hard to ensure that their tools can handle applications like therapy with sensitivity.  

Another trend will be the increasing focus on electricity as a resource as more and more data centres are built. While this is a concern across the world, prompting Google and others to even look at data centres in space, the spate of announcements about data centre investments in India have brought the question closer home to us.

This week, one of our columnists takes a close look at the issues, especially from the lens of AI and manufacturing resources competing for the same scarce resource — electricity.  

Here are some of the other major stories from the space:

• Hallucinations & More: How Journalists Are Taking On AI Majors Sparking A Global Copyright War

• Intel Shares Fall on Report Nvidia Halts Production Test

• Samsung Sets Eyes On AI Transformation In India, To Participate In PLI For Component Manufacturing

• Industry Consultations On Mandatory Labelling Of AI-Generated Content Over, Rules Soon: IT Secy

• AI Long-Term Impact Still Underestimated: Google DeepMind's Manish Gupta

• AI, Connectivity Shaping CEO Priorities: KPMG 2025 Technology & Telecommunications Outlook

• FunctionGemma Launch: Google Infuses AI Into Smartphones

• Ex-Nvidia Billionaire Unveils New AI Chips After China IPO Debut

See you in 2026!

-Ivor Soans