Near the start of each year, I look at what’s new in consumer technology to give a heads-up on which innovations could actually affect your day-to-day life amid the many fads you can ignore.
In the past, many trends showed up on this list repeatedly, like the smart home, fitness tech and electric cars, because the tech took time to mature. (Not everything pans out; while those last two examples became hot, smart home technology still has some rough edges.)
Now, it’s undeniable that generative artificial intelligence, the technology driving chatbots, is rapidly changing how many people use their devices and browse the web. The A.I. boom is also driving tech companies to experiment with selling new gadgets that may succeed the smartphone. And the largely positive consumer sentiment toward self-driving cars has helped Google’s Waymo robot taxis gain traction in major cities, setting up those services to significantly expand this year, including to freeways.
Here are the trends to watch this year.
1. We’ll finally be talking to our computers.
For the last 15 years, Apple, Google and Amazon made a big bet that their Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa voice assistants would persuade people to regularly talk to their computers to get things done. This vision hasn’t exactly panned out. People mostly use voice assistants for a few basic tasks, like checking the weather, playing songs and setting kitchen timers. It’s especially rare to see people talk to voice assistants in public.
But we may finally see a shift in consumer behavior with the surging popularity of A.I. chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. Lots of people are already conversing with the bots through text. So it’s reasonable to predict that as A.I. voices begin to sound humanlike, more people will start to talk to their computers, even in public, said Lucas Hansen, a founder of CivAI, a nonprofit that educates people about A.I.’s capabilities and consequences.
“More and more people are talking to A.I., not just as a search engine but as a conversational partner,” he said. “If you can put in your headphones and talk to it just like you’re having a phone call, then it’s less obvious to random people walking by that you’re talking with an A.I.”
The robot voices of popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini still sound somewhat fake, and the companies are still working to make them sound more natural. But Sesame AI, a start-up, has been making great strides in developing an A.I. voice companion with humanlike inflections. This development could make A.I. more fun to interact with, but also more problematic for those with mental health issues, like people who have had paranoid delusions and even died by suicide after conversing with chatbots, Mr. Hansen said.
2. The search continues for a successor to the smartphone.
Similar to laptop churn, annual smartphone upgrades have become routine. (Faster, with more battery life and a better camera!) Although phones are not going away, the acceleration of A.I. has created an opportunity for tech companies to experiment with devices they hope will be the next mainstream personal computing device, and some companies are betting hard on smart glasses.
Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which people use to take photos and listen to music, have been a modest hit, with millions of sales to date. Now, Meta is doubling down. Late last year, the company started selling the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which includes a digital display to show data and apps in the corner of a wearer’s eye.
Other tech companies, including Google and the start-up Pickle, have unveiled similar glasses with screens.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Google famously tried to sell Google Glass, a headset with a transparent display and camera, more than a decade ago. The device was a spectacular flop in large part because it was ugly, gimmicky and creepy to people who didn’t enjoy being surveilled.
This time, tech companies are hoping the chatty A.I. companions built into their glasses can make the devices more appealing.
Apple is still betting that the next big thing after the phone is a new-and-improved phone. This year, the company plans to release its first iPhone with a screen that can be unfolded like a book to increase its size to resemble a smaller iPad, according to a person briefed on the product, who was not authorized to speak about the product publicly.
Competitors like Google and Samsung have sold foldable phones for years, but the devices have remained a niche, in part because of their high price (upward of $1,800) and issues with durability.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
3. A.I. is changing how we browse the web.
A.I. is transforming the web, whether we like it or not. When we do a Google search, an A.I.-generated response is usually the first thing we see. Meta’s A.I. chatbot is built into Instagram and WhatsApp, with no option to turn it off. Companies including OpenAI and the Browser Company have also released web browsers with built-in A.I. assistants that answer our questions about the websites we are perusing. In Windows, Microsoft now includes an A.I. assistant, Copilot, that answers users’ questions. A.I. has become nearly unavoidable.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied those claims.)
