You’re Not Behind (Yet): What I Would Learn Before the 2026 AI Shift

2025 was an insane year in AI. We got

photorealistic AI video with realistic sound. We got the emergence of vibe

sound. We got the emergence of vibe coding. We also had an explosion of

coding. We also had an explosion of influencers selling AI agents and automations. And I guarantee you that

automations. And I guarantee you that 2026 is going to be much more insane in the world of AI. In this video, I'm going to give you my 10 predictions for

AI in 2026. And for each one, I'm going to explain what you can do and what you should do to prepare. My name is Riley.

I'm an AI founder in San Francisco and our company does over seven figures per year. And so these are my predictions

year. And so these are my predictions for 2026. Let's dive in.

for 2026. Let's dive in.

So here are my predictions for 2026. And

this is just a reminder that I am not trying to predict the future and seem smart. What I'm trying to do is show you

smart. What I'm trying to do is show you things that I think are very likely to be true so that you can position yourself accordingly. You can position

yourself accordingly. You can position yourself to be successful based on these trends. And so the first trend I want to

trends. And so the first trend I want to discuss is that Google will begin to dominate everything. They have the best

dominate everything. They have the best image editor model and the best video model and their image model Nano Banana which I can show you an example right

here. I can upload a photo of me. I can

here. I can upload a photo of me. I can

then very easily say give this man longer brown hair and make him wearing a

black turtle neck. And again, it's going to do the same exact thing. And then we can use this as the first frame in a video that we generate with Google's video models. Look at that. That's

video models. Look at that. That's

crazy. So, I can download this right here. We can go to video. We can change

here. We can go to video. We can change this. We can upload a start frame. There

this. We can upload a start frame. There

it is. And we can now generate this. All

right. So, it is done. Here is the video.

That is funny, Riley.

Bro, that is actually so weird. Anyway,

that is kind of what you can do here, right? You have the best image model, at

right? You have the best image model, at least best image editing model. I think

there's some things that uh the that OpenAI's model does better, which is the Chat GPT image model. It does

certain like illustrations better. It

does icons better. it can naturally just generate images without backgrounds. But

like for image editing, right, maybe we include that here, editing model, uh, nano banana is the best. And so then they also have the best video model. It

is the best video model. And so they have both of these two things. And then

they can kind of integrate that into doc, sheet, slides, and AI studio. And

I'm going to show you that in just a second. Uh, in fact, yeah, let's look at

second. Uh, in fact, yeah, let's look at slides. So if you're in slides here,

slides. So if you're in slides here, this is a guide that I was making. And a

lot of these images, this image is a nano banana image. And you can look at this. You can click on any image you add

this. You can click on any image you add into slides and hit edit image. And you

can edit it with nano banana. Right? We

can see here like if we're let's duplicate this slide. We can just add another slide here. And we could just say nano banana. I don't know. We're

making some slide. And what we can do here is we can actually open up this button. And now we have nano banana

button. And now we have nano banana built into their platform. So Google can integrate these platforms, right? They

can just integrate these platforms into anything that they have like slides, docs, and they also have Google Flow, which is their video editing platform that they're making for AI specifically.

But in this case, you can just generate like 3D icon of a banana cartoon sparkling and then you can just kind of

generate it into the platform. And every

single app that they have like slides, like Google Docs, like Google Sheets, you're going to have all of these platforms built into them. Some it's

going to be more useful than the other, but really understanding these image models is going to be really powerful.

Like you can just add this and you're like, "Oh, but like what's that good for?" or you know, but you can add it as

for?" or you know, but you can add it as a little icon. You can remove the background super easily and boom, now you have this banana in your presentation. And you know, this might

presentation. And you know, this might not be the most useful example, but it adds illustrations. It adds graphics.

adds illustrations. It adds graphics.

And they're going to be able to do this with all of their products. And that is just a really cool use case.

Additionally, Google Gemini also integrates with docs. So I can say, "Please write a short form script about Vibe Code app." And I gave it a link.

And because it has Google built into it, it can very easily search the internet.

It has probably the best internet search just because Google has everything indexed. And now it's going to give me a

indexed. And now it's going to give me a response. And this is Gemini, which is

response. And this is Gemini, which is their version of chat GPT, if you will, except it integrates with Google Docs natively. Okay, so now it's done. And as

natively. Okay, so now it's done. And as

you can see here, it opened up this side canvas. And what's really cool is it's

canvas. And what's really cool is it's very easily sharable, right? And we can share this, but we can also export it to Docs. Look at this. Opens up a new tab.

Docs. Look at this. Opens up a new tab.

And boom. We're in my account, the same account that I'm using for Google Gemini. And we already have this very,

Gemini. And we already have this very, very short form script right here.

Right? That is literally the power of having a Google powered LLM that integrates with Docs. And that's just actually insane. And just at a macro

actually insane. And just at a macro level, if we click on this tweet right here, we can actually see that we can see the market share being taken, right?

We see that Gemini is red. It's smaller,

smaller, getting a little bit bigger, getting a little bigger. Now, it's not insignificant, right? Open AAI had a

insignificant, right? Open AAI had a large advantage. They were first to the

large advantage. They were first to the market. They captured so much of the

market. They captured so much of the market share. Look at this. A year ago,

market share. Look at this. A year ago, they were like like 90% market share.

And now they're under 75%. And you know Gemini can be integrated into Google right if you go to Google right now and

you type in like what is the best way to make a new bakery business I don't know and you see this AI is integrated into

the search and so my bet is by the end of next year we could definitely see a world where it might go down to here they might it might be 50/50 and if

Google could get to 50/50 on Open AI, OpenAI is in deep trouble and I just think it's going to be so integrated into tools that so many people use, including Google, it's just going to be

really hard to compete. And so I would say to position yourself to be successful if you're in business or you're trying to get started with your own business or you want to be creative.

Like I really genuinely believe that learning Gemini 3, especially the Gemini CLI, their vibe coding tools. And then I didn't even get to Google AI Studio,

which is their uh AI platform. And this

is where you can actually learn how to use all of their different models. It

has a vibe coding tool built into here somewhere. There's a lot going on, but

somewhere. There's a lot going on, but they have all of the models that you can use. And this is how you can actually

use. And this is how you can actually use it in the apps that you create. And

so I recommend learning Google AI Studio. I also recommend just using all

Studio. I also recommend just using all of their creative models like Nano Banana and V3. All right, so trend number two. This one has to do with the

number two. This one has to do with the Apple App Store. So Apple just made a massive announcement. Basically, every

massive announcement. Basically, every single app on your phone can now become an app store. And this is because Apple's realizing that the future of

software is actually mini apps. So many

people are using models like Gemini 3 to create apps when tools like Lovable, Replet, Vibe Code. People are creating either web apps or mobile apps directly

on their phone or on their computer. And

what Apple's allowing is a mini app program where users can go onto your app and they can create software like vibe by through vibe coding and then sell

them as mini apps on a parent app. So

for instance yesterday every 1.13 minutes an app that was built on the vibe code app which is basically like cursor but for mobile apps directly on your phone was submitted to review to be

published on the Apple app store. And a

lot of these got approved, but a lot of vibe coders actually don't necessarily want to pay $100 per year to Apple to get their Apple developer account. And

and so a lot of people are going to send their apps to the app store. And it's

getting much easier with tools like Vibe Code. But somewhere along the lines, we

Code. But somewhere along the lines, we need to add a an app store. And so like Vibe Code Platform App Store. And so I expect to see Lovable release a mobile

app next year. and you're going to be able to publish little apps to their platform at the Vive Code app.

Obviously, I'm biased. I'm here at the Vive Code app app office in San Francisco and we are releasing the app store within the next few weeks and we're releasing it for beta and you're going to be able to actually create apps

directly on the platform. If you want to export your code or deploy it to the Apple App Store, you can do that. But

you have this intermediary where you can create mini apps for people who don't really want to go the full mile and worry about all of the security issues because we can actually create the

system that checks for security issues on your behalf. And so this a lot of people think that this is the YouTube moment for software and I'll explain what I mean by this. So in the year

2000, if you wanted to be a video maker or a filmmaker or something, you actually had to understand niche technologies like you needed to own a video camera, you also needed to

understand the niche software, which was video editing, which was reserved for not that many people. And so it was this very small group of people that could create videos for many people to see.

And then we saw YouTube come along and then platforms like Premiere Pro and other video editing platforms made it somewhat easier so that more people

could create videos and put them on a new platform, a new type of platform which was a free platform that you could upload to and you could very easily create videos. And then somewhere along

create videos. And then somewhere along the lines, you know, in 2020, you know, Cap Cut came out. I actually don't know when, maybe it's 2019 or something.

Caput came out and then obviously we had the iPhone cameras got a lot better somewhere between 2000 and 20uh 25 and between these two things right between

these two things right here anybody can create a video and put it online because then we had platforms like Tik Tok right so iPhone plus cap cut plus Tik Tok

platform editor which and physical device you could now create videos now it's very popular to say that I want to be a content creator. All I need is a phone, you know, maybe a little $20

microphone and I can become a content creator. Right now, you're watching this

creator. Right now, you're watching this on YouTube and I'm I didn't have to go to a film festival to put this out. I

just needed to film it on camera and I can make a video and I can progress as much as I want. I can use this to propel my career and that's really cool in my opinion. And so what I believe is

opinion. And so what I believe is happening is the same thing is happening with vibe coding. There are going to be platforms emerging which allow you to do the same thing YouTube allowed you to do with content. A few years ago, software

with content. A few years ago, software was only accessible to those who knew how to code. It was a specialized skill.

Oftent times you had to go to school or read books or do a boot camp. Now,

because of Vibe coding tools, you can create an app and soon upload it to just a Vibe Code app store and there's going to be a whole ecosystem. And the same way that you can kind of remix reals on

Tik Tok and in in Instagram reel, right?

You can clip things, you know, the same thing is going to happen to software and there might be a completely new platform that just changes the way we interact with software and becoming a creator

during this period is actually insane.

the opportunity to become a software creator in the height of vibe coding. I

just think we're going to look back, you know, in 2035, in 2035, we may look back at this opportunity and be like, "Wow, I wish I got into this early, right?" And

built a following, whatever that means, or built a reputation for creating really fun software, because anyone can do it just by describing the app that you want to build. And this is actually what I'm really inspired to build and

this is exactly what we're trying to build at Vibe Code is the next platform for people to create high-quality apps without writing any code. And so I I would say that like here is like learn

to vibe code because you can you realize when you start vibe coding is that vibe coding is a skill. And if some of you are watching this video right now and you're rolling your eyes, right? You're

rolling your eyes. You have vibe coding.

It's so cringey it's not going to catch on. Blah blah blah. Guess what? During

on. Blah blah blah. Guess what? During

this period right here, uh there was a character, his name is Gary Vee. He was

one of the guys who was constantly saying, "You got to make content. You

got to create content. You got to create a hundred pieces of content all the time." He kept saying this over and over

time." He kept saying this over and over and over again. And guess what? People

cringed the same way you're cringing at Vibe Coding. And so, the more people are

Vibe Coding. And so, the more people are cringing about a certain trend, the more I actually think it's bound to happen.

And you know, that might be why we've named our company Vibe Coding is because I think it's a perfect blend of being cool and fun and open and creative while also being somewhat cringe. Because if

it's cringe, that means, you know, it's going to catch on. And that's just the age that we live in. And so, learn to vibe code because it's a very, very valuable skill. And obviously, I'll make

valuable skill. And obviously, I'll make a lot more videos on this specifically, but that is trend number two. All right,

trend number three. This one is the most different out of all of them in the list. I believe we are about to see a

list. I believe we are about to see a massive backlash from a large percent of the population and I believe people will crave connection. People already crave

crave connection. People already crave connection especially with social media being integrated with video you know meta vibes. If we look up meta vibes

meta vibes. If we look up meta vibes real quick this is like AI video slot generation that Meta tried to release.

Obviously, we had Sora 2 uh was released, which is their app that you can just watch AI generated videos and you could put your friends in AI generated videos. Meta is going to do

generated videos. Meta is going to do the same exact thing. People don't want this. I'm convinced that obviously they

this. I'm convinced that obviously they have a lot of hype. They had a lot of people. That's why this was uh pretty

people. That's why this was uh pretty high ranked on the app store. Sora 2,

their latest application. And I just don't believe that people want this. And

I just really think that as we'll get to a little bit later, I have some more social media predictions coming up. I

just believe that a zero AI social media platform will emerge and take market share. So like you could imagine like a

share. So like you could imagine like a Tik Tok except like literally no AI allowed. And I believe this platform is

allowed. And I believe this platform is going to basically be like you can take videos like Vine, but there's zero uploading. No uploading videos allowed.

uploading. No uploading videos allowed.

you can only take videos and like there's no editing, right? And I think that is going to be super powerful because if you think of like what's going to become scarce, it's going to be

like human content made from the heart.

And like how do you guarantee that that will happen is you just don't allow people to edit videos or upload videos or find ways to add AI workflows. And so

I genuinely believe that one of the best things that you can do is really get involved in person. you want to. And I

think in real life communities is basically one of the biggest opportunities in 2026. Technology is

getting so insane. AI, the AI algorithms that are that power social media are getting so strong that people are craving to get off of it. People really

want to use dumb devices. There's a

massive trend going around surrounding dumb phones. Dumb phones are basically

dumb phones. Dumb phones are basically phones that are nerfed on purpose. So,

this is a phone that's made within the last year or so, and it's it's not like it's old, like an old phone, but it literally just has the essentials. So,

you can't be hijacked by notifications, and they they're charging a pretty penny for these. But, I believe that these are

for these. But, I believe that these are going to become really popular. And I I I think I think they already are becoming really popular, and a lot of the younger generation is spending less time on social media because they just

want off of it. They look at their parents who are addicted to watching Facebook videos all day and they're like, I don't want any part of that.

It's becoming uncool to be addicted to your phone. And so I look at that as a

your phone. And so I look at that as a massive opportunity. I would say one of

massive opportunity. I would say one of the biggest things that you could do is create inreal life events and communities. And just coming from

communities. And just coming from Austin, Texas, there's a lot of inrealife communities there. And I see them and they are popping. and they have a big social presence, but the main

purpose of the group, like you can have like a social presence, which is never a bad thing to have, but like their goal is to get people to show up in person, which I think is pretty cool. So, get

really good at the soft skills because people are getting much worse at soft skills as a result of AI talking to AI.

No one like I remember seeing a study where people like don't want to pick up the phone to call someone like they they just are too afraid to do it. So if you if you nail the soft skills and you're good at small talk and you're good at

connecting with people, you're going to be in a really good position in 2026 and beyond. So that's trend number three.

beyond. So that's trend number three.

People are going to crave connection and this might cause a lot of people to revolt and take to in real life events.

Okay. So the next trend is anthropic is going to win the coding war. If you are interested in vibe coding, you must understand how to use claude code because I think their whole company,

Thropic's whole company is set up around coding. If they don't win the coding

coding. If they don't win the coding war, they lose. Open AAI and Google can lose the coding war and their company will be fine. And Enthropic right now currently has the best coding model in

the world by a small margin arguably.

And they also have Claude, but as you saw in that chart earlier, none of their business comes from people using the clawed version of chat GBT. A lot of people use it, but not many people use

it compared to their other brand, which is Clawed Code. And I know I said that no one really uses the Claw desktop app, but I'm one of their users. I use it over ChatGpt because I just like the

branding. Honestly, like uh Anthropic

branding. Honestly, like uh Anthropic released this ad a few weeks ago where they were basically their whole thing was keep thinking and it was all all about like thinking and experimenting

and doing art, etc., etc., and not slop, right? OpenAI has a lot of slop. You

right? OpenAI has a lot of slop. You

know, their their 40 model, their OpenAI GPT 40 model was a super was like a suckup and it was telling you incorrect things, but it was doing so in a way to

keep you on their platform. It will

actually openly lie to you to keep you on the platform. It'll tell you that like you're right no matter what.

Whereas Claude is more about like their whole branding and I think they're going to double down on this is like differentiating between the swap, right?

They're they just have created a platform that's more centered around scientific and their models actually care more about coding and math and things like that. And I just definitely

like that a lot more. I don't want an AI chatbot to like I don't care about it emotionally. I don't want to care about

emotionally. I don't want to care about it emotionally. And OpenAI is trying to

it emotionally. And OpenAI is trying to go after the younger generation. They're

going after the younger generation, getting them like almost addicted to talking to a chatbot about all of their problems rather than using an AI to solve your problems really fast and

encourage you to go out and do things in the world. That's why you should use AI.

the world. That's why you should use AI.

You should not use AI to talk to for entertainment. And so I would definitely

entertainment. And so I would definitely focus on learning Claude tools. And so

you can all you can learn Claude or you can lose Google's tools because it integrates with all of the other Google products. I I just think both of those

products. I I just think both of those are better than using OpenAI at this stage because they're trying to get people addicted to like AI video generation slop. And yes, Google has AI

generation slop. And yes, Google has AI video generation, but they didn't create like a swap social network. And so for that reason, I would definitely lean more into using anthropics tools. Okay,

so here's the next trend. This one I think is really, really exciting. So

this year in 2025, a lot of influencers were selling agents. And if you've spent any time on Instagram and you're in the AI space, you recognize this. This is an

automation with an AI agent embedded into it. And they go super viral and

into it. And they go super viral and influencers made a lot of money selling these automations so that people could sell these automations to companies. And

so I use NN quite frequently to create automations. But I still think it's

automations. But I still think it's pretty annoying to make. And we I've made videos about this in the past. I

believe that this interface went viral because I think it's good. I just think there will be one that's much friendlier and it it will be a better abstraction and it'll probably be more like a person

that you give it access to skills and it can just go out and do things in the world, right? You could create an agent

world, right? You could create an agent to just read all of your emails and and be very autonomous. And I think 2026 is the year that we're going to get much more agentic applications for everyday

users. You have to be pretty technical

users. You have to be pretty technical to use N8N. And if there's one piece of advice that I could tell you in this area of a new agentic interface, test all of them. Look for problems in your

life or look for problems in your company's life and try to solve them with AI agents and use the different platforms because I genuinely believe that there's going to be a massive

opportunity here. And also if you are

opportunity here. And also if you are the one to invent this, there's a lot of Y combinator companies and a lot of startups being funded to try and solve this problem like the the interface of agents problem, you're going to be a

billionaire if you do this right. And

OpenAI is trying. They released like if you go to OpenAI agent builder, if we look this up, they tried to release this agent builder, absolutely terrible,

sucks. Google's trying to release uh an

sucks. Google's trying to release uh an N8N competitor and they call this workspace flows. I've heard Bix's

workspace flows. I've heard Bix's reviews on it, but it looks a lot like Zapier. And as you can see here, a lot

Zapier. And as you can see here, a lot of these huge companies want to try and reinvent this. And so my advice beyond

reinvent this. And so my advice beyond inventing it and becoming a billionaire would be use all of the new agent

builder tools and try and ride the wave.

Okay, final round of predictions. These

are my more bold predictions and yeah, we're going to kind of do a lightning speed round. These are all have to do

speed round. These are all have to do with like AI social media predictions is Meta integrates with Meta Vibes with Instagram. So, I told you earlier about

Instagram. So, I told you earlier about Meta Vibes, which is this platform that allows you to like generate AI generated video and I don't think anyone's going to switch to this meta AI platform. So,

I think Mark is going to try and bring this platform into Instagram, and I think it's going to be a huge flop because people on Instagram at large don't care about AI. In fact, they're pretty anti-AII. People on Tik Tok are

pretty anti-AII. People on Tik Tok are very anti-AI. I think it's going to

very anti-AI. I think it's going to flop. The next big prediction, and so

flop. The next big prediction, and so this is my more bold prediction, is I think Elon Musk at XAI. They're going to release a video game builder directly into X. You're going to be able to

into X. You're going to be able to create video games directly on X and you're going to be able to play them in the Twitter feed. And I think people are going to like it initially and then it's

going to flop. The final prediction is that I I already talked about this uh a good amount is a new social media platform that does not allow AI will begin to take market share really fast.

And I I want to double down on this. So

there was a new platform, new Vine platform. There's this new one. It's

platform. There's this new one. It's

called Divine. So, Divine Vine Platform.

And so, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, they created something very similar to this. And I actually made I showed you

this. And I actually made I showed you earlier, I made the prediction that there's going to be a social media platform. I made that before I saw this.

platform. I made that before I saw this.

And just before filming this video, I actually saw this new platform. And this

is exactly something that I think could take off. I do think the six-second

take off. I do think the six-second loops is too short. I think they're going to end up increasing it to like 30 seconds or a minute. But the main thing that I believe will catch on is videos

that cannot be edited. They have to be taken from an iPhone or an Android.

There's no uploading features. You can

only take video and then as soon as you release your finger like if you're hold you hold it down to film, it'll just immediately get uploaded and there's no editing whatsoever. I think that would

editing whatsoever. I think that would actually be a really fun platform and I believe that will actually take off if they can really truly prevent any sort

of AI video because I think people really crave humanmade content. And so

those are my predictions in AI for 2026.

I really hope you gain some value at least in one of these areas and apply it to your life. And as 2026 goes on, I'm going to be covering everything. And as

these news trends emerge as things get updated, I'm going to get some things wrong. New platforms will emerge. Vibe

wrong. New platforms will emerge. Vibe

coding, that's guaranteed. You need to learn how to vibe code. That's 100%. But

other than that, a lot can happen. I'm

going to cover it all right here on this channel. And so I'll see you here for

channel. And so I'll see you here for that.