Why 2026 belongs to multimodal AI

For the past three years, AI ’s breakout moment has happened almost entirely through text. We type a prompt, get a response, and move to the next task. While this intuitive interaction style turned chatbots into a household tool overnight, it barely scratches the surface of what the most advanced technology of our time can actually do. This disconnect has created a significant gap in how consumers utilize AI. While the underlying models are rapidly becoming multimodal—capable of processing voice, visuals, and video in real time—most consumers are still using them as a search engine. Looking toward 2026, I believe the next wave of adoption won’t be about utility alone, but about evolving beyond static text into dynamic, immersive interactions. This is AI 2.0: not just retrieving information faster, but experiencing intelligence through sound, visuals, motion, and real-time context. AI adoption has reached a tipping point. In 2025, ChatGPT’s weekly user base doubled from roughly 400 million in February to 800 million by year’s end. Competitors like Gemini and Anthropic saw similar growth, yet most users still engage with LLMs primarily via text chatbots. In fact, Deloitte’s Connected Consumer Survey shows that despite over half (53%) of consumers experimenting with generative AI, most people still relegate AI to administrative tasks like writing, summarizing, and researching. Yet when you look at the digital behavior of consumers outside of AI, it’s clear consumers crave immersive experiences. According to Activate Consulting’s Tech & Media Outlook 2026 , 43% of Gen Z prefer user-generated platforms like TikTok and YouTube over traditional TV or paid streaming, and they spend 54% more time on social video platforms than the average consumer, abandoning traditional media for interactive social platforms. This creates a fundamental mismatch: Consumers live in a multi-sensory world, but their AI tools are stuck delivering plain text. While the industry recognizes this gap and is investing to close it, I predict we’ll see a fundamental shift in how people use and create with AI. In AI 2.0, users will no longer simply consume AI-generated content but will instead leverage multimodal AI to bring voice, visuals, and text together, allowing them to shape and direct their experiences in real time. MULTI MODAL AI UNLOCKS IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING If AI 1.0 was about efficiency, AI 2.0 is about engagement. While text-based AI is limited in how deeply it can engage audiences, multimodal AI allows the user to become an active participant. Instead of reading a story, you can interact with a main character and take the plot in a new direction or build your own world where narratives and characters evolve with you. We can look to the $250 billion gaming industry as the blueprint for the potential that multimodal AI has. Video games combine visuals, audio, narrative, and real-time agency, creating an immersive experience that traditional entertainment can’t replicate. Platforms like Roblox and Minecraft let players inhabit content. Roblox alone reaches over 100 million daily users , who collectively spend tens of billions of hours a year...

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