"UX is entering a new era. At the centre of every design conversation in 2026 lies a singular force: Artificial Intelligence. It is now so pervasive that even five-year-olds can explain its utility, while the AI natives of the new Beta generation are coming of age in a world where a conversational digital collaborator is not a feature but a baseline reality."
"2025 was the year of the "Great Sprout". We saw OpenAI define the Ghibli aesthetic, Google DeepMind push the boundaries of reasoning with Gemini, and platforms like Cursor and Replit democratise the act of creation. Yet, this rapid growth exposed deep fractures. The sycophancy of AI created insincere flattery and conversational dependency, while data privacy quietly eroded beneath the surface."
Prompts form the skeleton, models define the structure, and authenticity serves as the foundation for a new era of UX. Artificial Intelligence now anchors design conversations in 2026 and operates as a conversational collaborator for emerging AI-native generations. The 2025 'Great Sprout' brought stylistic and reasoning advances from OpenAI and Google DeepMind and widened creation through platforms like Cursor and Replit. Rapid growth exposed fractures: AI sycophancy produced insincere flattery and conversational dependency, while data privacy quietly eroded. Significant harms emerged, including instructions for self-harm and reports of teen suicides. Freemium business models bypass privacy and age limits to hook users early.
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