8 Predictions About the Future of AI, and What They Mean for the Channel
Google for Startups just published a 37-page report called Future of AI: Perspectives on Generative Media for Startups. Inside it, eight named industry leaders, founders, investors, and product heads from companies like Synthesia, Freepik, Lux Capital, Google Labs, Gradient, OpusClip, and Leonardo.Ai, put their names on specific predictions about where AI is going over the next two to three years.
We read the whole thing. The predictions are not surprising on their own. What is surprising is how directly they map onto the conversations happening inside the technology channel right now: who hires who, how partner programs get built, what a Channel Manager actually does on a Tuesday morning, and where the next category of competitive advantage is going to come from.
Here are the eight predictions, the people who made them, and the read on what each one means if you sell, partner, or operate inside the channel.
1. Video will replace text
Victor Riparbelli, Co-Founder and CEO, Synthesia
"As the marginal cost of creating video content drops to zero, enterprises will embrace it over traditional formats like slides and docs."
Riparbelli's specific call: 45-second videos will replace long slide decks in enterprise training, B2B websites, and internal communication.
What this means for the channel: Your supplier enablement library, your partner onboarding decks, and your quarterly business reviews are all about to get rebuilt. The supplier programs that still treat partners to PDF playbooks in 2026 are going to lose mindshare to the ones who put a 45-second walkthrough in front of a Technology Advisor at the moment they need it.
2. The film industry will flip to AI within two to three years
Joaquín Cuenca Abela, Co-Founder and CEO, Freepik
"In the next two or three years, it will take over economically, with AI productions collecting more revenue than traditional productions."
Cuenca Abela also predicts that animation will flip to a new model inside the current year.
What this means for the channel: If an entire industry built on creative craft can be reshaped in three years, your assumption that "this is how we have always sold" has a very short shelf life. The suppliers and partners who win the next decade are the ones who treat their go-to-market as something to be rebuilt, not maintained.
3. We are moving toward a post-keyboard world
Grace Isford, Partner, Lux Capital
"We're starting to see some very interesting frontier advancements in the brain-computer interface space. It's a whole new modality, capable of intuiting and interpreting neural signals to then become an extension of your mind."
Isford's view: the keyboard, the form, and the dashboard will give way to interfaces that intuit intent.
What this means for the channel: Every partner portal and supplier dashboard in our ecosystem is currently a form. Forms are temporary. The channel programs that start designing for voice, conversation, and ambient interaction now will be the ones partners actually use in 2028.
4. Founders will become creative directors
Jaclyn Konzelmann, Director of Product Management, Google Labs
"As a founder, how do you take a step back from the hands-on work that you're used to, and allow the AI to become the worker instead? How do you step into more of a creative director role?"
Konzelmann argues that AI does not pull founders out of the work. It makes them more hands-on, because they direct fleets of agents instead of doing the toil.
What this means for the channel: This is the most useful frame in the entire report for anyone running a channel program. The modern Channel Manager is not a relationship-only role and not a reporting role. It is a director-of-agents role. You orchestrate prospecting, partner research, deal intelligence, and content generation across a fleet of AI workflows. The Channel Managers who learn to direct will outrun the ones who stay hands-on.
5. Individual creators will dominate the media landscape
Darian Shirazi, Managing Partner, Gradient
"Content creators will become more relevant than traditional media brands. These creators can research topics deeply, and deliver content to consumers in meaningful, personalized ways."
Shirazi also predicts that legacy media brands become less relevant as bi-directional media takes over, where the consumer and the model exchange context to deliver something personalized.
What this means for the channel: Partners trust people, not logos. The supplier brands that build a stable of credible internal voices, real practitioners on LinkedIn, in podcasts, on stage, will outpace the ones who keep pushing the corporate handle. This is also why podcast presence matters more than another press release.
6. Gamers will enter "living" metaverses
David Benjamin, Team Lead, Creative Lab and Co-Founder, AI Futures Fund, Google
"Real-time generative AI will transform gaming into a responsive, 'living' metaverse that adapts its narrative and atmosphere to a player's unique interests."
Benjamin also coins the term "liquid games": games that mutate their mechanics based on player behavior.
What this means for the channel: Replace "game" with "buyer journey." The next generation of supplier marketing is a liquid experience that adapts to the partner or end customer in real time. Static landing pages aimed at three personas are going to feel as dated as a CD-ROM training course.
7. Personalized videos will lead the way
Grace Wang, Co-Founder and CMO, OpusClip
"The biggest shift for AI startups will be moving from 'novelty' to 'personalization.' The next generation of tools won't justgenerate generic video, they will precisely understand an individual's style and enhance their specific story."
Wang also makes one of the report's most pointed operational claims: workflows that used to require a team of ten can now be executed by one or two AI builders.
What this means for the channel: Watch the headcount conversation closely. Suppliers that staff their marketing org with ten generalists are about to be out-marketed by suppliers that staff with two AI-fluent builders. This is going to reshape the conversation about what a partner marketing function actually looks like.
8. AI will soon generate haptics and spatial acoustics
Sami Ede, Co-Founder and Senior ML Researcher, Leonardo.Ai
"AI is extremely good at learning, and it won't be long before it's creating spatial acoustics for 3D experiences. And, as tailored actuators become more readily available, it also won't be long before AI-generated haptics can also become part of a brand's toolkit."
Ede pushes furthest into the future, into the senses themselves.
What this means for the channel: Sounds far-off until you remember that brand experience is what closes complex deals. The first supplier in our ecosystem to put a partner inside a generative, multi-sensory demo, not a slide deck, not a sandbox, an actual environment, will own a moment of differentiation that lasts a sales cycle.
The pattern underneath all eight
Read them together and the pattern is obvious. Every prediction assumes the marginal cost of producing content, experiences, and interactions is heading to zero. When production cost goes to zero, value moves somewhere else.
In the channel, value moves to three places.
Taste. Knowing what to make. Which partners to target. Which messages will land in which segments. AI does not have taste yet. Practitioners do.
Intent. Knowing what is actually happening inside an account, not what someone said in a QBR. This is exactly what Ground Truth Intelligence is built to solve.
Architecture. Building workflows, not tools. As Sami Ede put it in the same report: "you're not building tools anymore. Rather, you need to build entire workflows that capture the user end-to-end."
The channel has a habit of waiting for these shifts to fully arrive before adjusting. That timeline has collapsed. The two-to-three year window in this report is not a forecast. It is a deadline.
What to do this quarter
Audit your enablement library. How much of it is still PDFs and decks? Pick one program and rebuild it as 45-second videos.
Identify one workflow your Channel Manager owns that can be agent-directed. Prospecting research is the easiest place to start.
Pick one supplier program asset and rebuild it as a personalized experience instead of a static page.
Have an honest conversation about who you are hiring in 2026. Are you still hiring for 2019 job descriptions?
If you want to see what an AI-native channel program looks like in practice, we built one. It is called the Channel 2.0 Methodology, and it lives at thechannel.ai.
Source: "Future of AI: Perspectives on Generative Media for Startups," Google for Startups, 2025. Foreword by Darren Mowry, VP of Global Startups, Google. Contributors: Victor Riparbelli (Synthesia), Joaquín Cuenca Abela (Freepik), Grace Isford (Lux Capital), Jaclyn Konzelmann (Google Labs), Darian Shirazi (Gradient), David Benjamin (Google Creative Lab / AI Futures Fund), Grace Wang (OpusClip), Sami Ede (Leonardo.Ai).