AI predictions for 2026

My trend prediction for the new year: 2026 will be the year of the scrub.

We spent 2025 on an AI witch hunt. 

We've been crying foul about em-dashes and j'accusing "it's not X, it's Y" contrastive framing all year.

I'm not sure if people have stopped using AI images, or if posts accompanied by AI images just don't perform. Either way, they're already on the decline.

But now that we've spent a year vilifying people who use AI to enhance their content, I think "performative imperfection" is going to be the new trend of 2026. 

Typos are going to be hot.

We're going to edit photos to enhance imperfections, not deemphasize them. 

Spinach in teeth.

Bad lighting.

Pimples.

Puffy "I just woke up" eyes in selfies.

Toilet paper stuck to shoes.

That one stray chunk of hair that always does its own thing now gets a name and cult status.

By August there will be filters that put spinach in your teeth, tussle your hair, and give you redeye. 

AI will take that folded blanket off of the back of the couch in your background and throw it carelessly over an arm of the couch.

By October you'll be able to get a filter where a cat walks across the keyboard between your face and the camera mid-sentence. 

By next December we'll know all the tricks. The fake tooth-spinach and shoe-toilet-paper will be too easy to spot. 

People will start lampooning faux-thenticity and the same company that gave us the casually-thrown background blanket and AI keyboard cat will give us an Ally McBeal dancing baby that you can drop like an easter egg into your backgrounds, just to see who notices. 

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