Emerging Experiences

Emerging experiences are becoming political: US states legislate AI companions, Japan balances AI promotion with home-grown platforms, India frames AI as the 'next digital revolution after UPI' and builds sovereign AI, while agentic commerce becomes an international tug-of-war over payment control.

1. 🇺🇸 In the US the flagship new experience — AI companions — is now a state-political issue: New York's S9051 bans companion chatbots for under-18s and passed unanimously (Assembly 137-0, Senate 60-0).[14]
2. Agentic commerce is becoming a policy tug-of-war over who controls payments and distribution: Visa partnered with OpenAI to give AI agents limited spending authority, making rule-setting an international issue.[8]
3. 🇯🇵 Japan pairs AI promotion with an implicit interest in home-grown SNS/character ecosystems; MIXI frames overseas expansion (e.g. the first betting license held by a Japanese firm in Australia) within a 'reduce yen dependence' portfolio narrative.[17]
4. 🇮🇳 India frames AI as the 'next digital revolution after UPI', putting new experiences at the center of industrial policy: Reliance Intelligence is building a sovereign AI backbone in Jamnagar, turning MyJio into an AI advisor for 600M users and rolling out domain assistants (JioHealthIQ, JioKrishiIQ) at population scale.[30]

Coming soon

New experiences are monetizing for real: the consumer AI-companion market hit an estimated $120M run-rate in H2 2025 (market sized at $36.8B in 2025 [Grand View] / $49.5B in 2026 [Fortune]), Meta sold 7M+ smart glasses (AR revenue heading to ~$13B by 2029), the VTuber market reaches $7.26B in 2026, TikTok Shop GMV is projected at $87B, Roblox posted $1.7B quarterly bookings on 31B hours, and India became the largest market for GenAI app downloads (+207% YoY).

1. By one industry estimate, consumer AI-companion apps generated $82M in H1 2025 alone and reached a ~$120M annualized run-rate by year end; 337 revenue-generating apps now exist worldwide, 128 of them launched in 2025 (a 38% catalog expansion) — a fast take-off.[2]
2. Analyst estimates of the AI-companion market range from $36.8B (Grand View, 2025) to $49.5B (Fortune, 2026), all led by the consumer segment (~38% share in 2025) — the new experience already forms a multi-billion-dollar demand layer.[4]
3. Smart glasses are scaling as a new hardware category: EssilorLuxottica sold 7M+ Meta AI glasses in 2025 (3x+ YoY), AR revenue is forecast to grow from $2.61B (2024) to $13.05B (2029), and 2026 shipments are projected at 13.4M.[12][13]
4. 🇺🇸 AI-native UGC/creator economics are monetizing at scale: Roblox posted Q1 2026 bookings of $1.7B (+43%), 31B engaged hours and ~132M DAU, paying out ~$1.5B to creators over the trailing year — the distribution rail for new experiences.[10]
5. 🇺🇸 Shoppable livestreaming is booming as a new consumption experience: TikTok Shop GMV is heading from ~$66B (2025) to a projected $87B (2026), ~20% of social commerce, with live sellers seeing +84% YoY sales and US creator-led social commerce up +120%.[36]
6. The digital-human/VTuber economy is expanding: the VTuber market grows from $5.38B (2025) to $7.26B (2026) (forecast $108B by 2035, 35% CAGR), led by Hololive (38%) and Nijisanji/AnyColor (30%) — character operation x livestreaming is a flagship new-experience format.[28]
7. 🇮🇳 India is emerging as the largest demand source for new experiences: GenAI app downloads jumped +207% YoY in 2025 making it the world's largest market, capturing ~19% of leading AI-assistant users globally (ahead of the US at 10%); Krutrim, the first domestic AI unicorn, posted ~INR 3B revenue (3x) and its first profit in FY2026.[29]
8. 🇦🇺 In Australia, esports/virtual-sports betting and mobile gambling are growth drivers: operators are rapidly adopting AI for marketing personalization and fraud/harm detection, making AI personalization and live spectating new competitive axes in the market where MIXI-owned PointsBet operates.[32][17]
9. 🇯🇵 MIXI uses new experiences as a diversification lever: Q3 FY2026 revenue rose +18% on consolidated sports, TIPSTAR +87.2%, and FamilyAlbum (25M users across 175 countries) targets a 10%+ revenue contribution — leaning on new formats to reduce Monster Strike dependence.[17][22]

Coming soon

By Feb 2026 ~50M people worldwide (18M US) use AI companions daily; Character.AI's 18-24s reportedly average ~25 sessions and ~1.5 hours a day; ~40% of Japanese teens/twenty-somethings say they can emotionally connect with generative AI. Anonymous/ephemeral social (Noplace/Fizz), VTuber fandoms, AI-native companion games and longevity wearables run in parallel — new experiences are rewriting relationships, leisure and self-management.

1. AI companions are embedding into daily behavior: ~50M people worldwide use them as of Feb 2026, 18M in the US — and as Valentine's-season demand shows, 'relationship' itself is now a core theme of the new experience.[1]
2. 🇺🇸 Character.AI draws ~20M global MAU (≈4.4M US app MAU) and 200M+ monthly visits, with a majority of users aged 18-24; some tallies report this cohort averaging ~25 sessions and ~1.5 hours daily — a sign that youth attention is migrating from traditional social/games toward AI characters.[3]
3. 🇯🇵 In Japan, a Feb 2025 survey found 38% of teens and 42% of twenty-somethings believe they can have meaningful emotional exchanges with generative AI; Gatebox's live-with-a-character model and a cluster of character-projection devices at CES 2026 confirm real demand at the character x AI intersection.[16][11]
4. 🇺🇸 AI-only social shows both hype and sorting: OpenAI's Sora app drew buzz as the 'TikTok of AI' but lacked sustained interest in an AI-only feed and shut down on Apr 26, 2026 — a social lesson that even new experiences need human participation.[5][6]
5. New social formats are proliferating: anonymous/hyperlocal apps (Fizz raised $40M across 700 campuses; Gas targets high-schoolers) and nostalgia-driven Noplace (chart-topping) offer algorithm-fatigued youth small-group, candid, non-performative connection.[38][6]
6. 🇯🇵 VTubers/digital humans are central to fandom: anchored by Hololive/Nijisanji, even in the US 70%+ of viewers are 18-34 and ~50% of content is gaming-related — embedding at the youth x gaming x character intersection, with character operation a primary livestream format.[28]
7. AI-native companion games are a new genre: Anuttacon's 'Whispers from the Star' (from an ex-HoYoverse founder) drops dialogue trees for a voice-driven experience saving AI character Stella, launching to strong Steam reviews in Aug 2025 — though critics note 'conversational freedom isn't narrative freedom'.[37]
8. Health/longevity experiences are becoming a daily self-management format: Oura Ring (Ring 5 mid-2026) and WHOOP 5.0 translate sleep/recovery/metabolism into actionable guidance via a 'biological age' metric and AI coach — wellness embeds as a gamified new experience.[34]
9. 🇮🇳 In India, creator-economy GenAI dominates: 7 of the 20 most-downloaded GenAI apps in 2025 were content creation/editing tools — human-AI co-creation is the entry point for youth, with multilingual assistants like Kruti (13 Indian languages) driving mass adoption.[29]

Coming soon

World models (Genie 3 / Project Genie) generate controllable 3D worlds, Roblox slashes creation barriers with 4D generation and agentic AI, and on-device AI (Apple Intelligence / Gemini Nano), agentic browsers (Comet/Atlas), ambient AI wearables (Bee/Limitless/Friend), home humanoids (Figure 03/1X NEO), BCIs (Neuralink/Synchron) and spatial computing are remaking the vessel of experience.

1. World models make 'engine-less' games real: DeepMind's Genie 3 generates controllable 3D worlds at 720p/24fps with minutes-long consistency, and Project Genie opened to US AI Ultra subscribers on Jan 29, 2026 — making generation and remixing the core of the new experience.[9]
2. 🇺🇸 Roblox is collapsing creation barriers with agentic AI: '4D object creation' turns a text prompt into a 3D object with physical properties (e.g. a drivable car), and AI-generated asset adoption reached ~70% — generative UGC is entering mass production.[11]
3. On-device AI changes the experience baseline: Apple Intelligence runs device models distilled from Google's large Gemini, and Android ships Gemini Nano (via AICore on a Gemma base) — standardizing low-latency, offline, privacy-preserving agent experiences.[25][15]
4. Agentic browsers are a new entry point: Perplexity Comet (Jul 2025, free from Oct) and OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas (Oct 2025, Agent Mode) autonomously execute multi-step tasks, and by April 2026 agentic traffic was led by Comet (48%), Atlas (21%), the Claude extension (17%) and ChatGPT Agent (9%).[33]
5. Ambient/voice AI wearables form a new always-on capture layer: Bee (which summarizes conversations) was acquired by Amazon in Jul 2025 (folded into the CES 2026 Alexa roadmap) and Limitless by Meta in Dec 2025; at $49.99 + $19/month, an always-on 'ear' is becoming real.[31]
6. Robotics/embodied AI is approaching the home: Figure 03 (unveiled Oct 2025, $20,000, Helix VLA, BotQ producing 1/hour), 1X NEO (shipping 2026, $20,000 or $499/month, with a teleoperated 'Expert Mode') and Tesla Optimus (consumer 2027+) are racing toward daily-life deployment.[27]
7. 🇺🇸 Brain-computer interfaces are clinical reality: Neuralink's N1 placed 1,024-channel wireless implants in over a dozen patients, while Synchron's Stentrode reads neural signals via the jugular vein without open surgery — medical devices for now, but the ultimate frontier of input experience to watch.[26]
8. Spatial computing is in a sorting phase: Apple Vision Pro fell from 390K (2024) to 85K (2025) and just 45K in Q4 2025 (ad spend cut 95%), while Meta Quest holds ~80% of the VR market (~30M installed); MR/VR shipments dropped 42.8% in 2025 even as smart glasses grew +211% — the interface lead is shifting.[35]
9. 🇺🇸 The technical rails for agentic commerce are forming: OpenAI shipped Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), with Target, Sephora, Best Buy and Walmart integrating, while an MCP/Stripe-based 'ChatGPT superapp' concept redefines the entry point to experiences.[7][8]
10. Smart glasses are becoming AI's new interface: starting with the Sep 2025 Ray-Ban Display (in-lens display + neural-band control, $799), gesture/gaze-driven glasses-native experiences are emerging — a device-layer shift driving new experiences.[12]

Coming soon

Safety regulation of AI companions is rapidly becoming law (CA SB243 grants a private right of action; NY S9051 bans minors' access at $25,000/violation; Character.AI/Google settled teen-suicide suits). Generative impersonation/NSFW, the privacy of always-on wearables and teleoperated robots, and Australia's ACMA gambling-AI oversight are also flashpoints.

1. 🇺🇸 California's SB243 (signed Oct 13, 2025; core rules effective Jan 1, 2026) mandates AI-status disclosure, self-harm-prevention protocols, periodic 'you're talking to a non-human' reminders for minors, and a private right of action — making compliance a baseline for companion design.[19]
2. 🇺🇸 New York's S9051 (passed June 2026) bans offering companion chatbots to under-18s and lets the AG fine up to $25,000 per violation; Idaho, Oregon and Washington have also enacted curbs on claimed sentience and sexual conversations with minors.[14]
3. 🇺🇸 In Jan 2026 Character.AI and Google settled multiple wrongful-death/teen-harm suits (FL, NY, CO, TX) — embedding safety-by-design duties and liability risk into the business case for AI-character experiences.[21]
4. Generative impersonation and NSFW are the regulatory front line: Sora's 'cameo' feature raises consent/likeness issues and xAI's Grok 'Ani' drew NSFW/minor-protection criticism — making consent, age-rating and moderation universal legal questions for generative-character experiences.[5][18]
5. Always-on wearables and teleoperated robots are a new privacy-law front: conversation-recording Bee/Limitless raise wiretap/consent/retention questions, and 1X NEO's teleoperated 'Expert Mode' (an operator controlling the device inside your home) raises in-home surveillance concerns — expanding the reach of consumer-protection and data law.[31][27]
6. 🇦🇺 Australia's ACMA studied the rapid spread of AI in gambling, warning that while AI powers both personalized marketing and harm detection, commercial priorities may outweigh harm minimization; combined with a tightening AML/CTF framework, compliance becomes a precondition for AI x betting new experiences.[32]

Coming soon

Always-on generative AI lifts data-center power demand while on-device AI shifts inference to the edge; meanwhile the proliferation of humanoids, glasses, wearables and headsets expands manufacturing/upgrade/e-waste lifecycle concerns.

1. World models and video generation (Genie/Sora class) require heavy GPU inference, and AI-only feeds or real-time generative experiences expand data-center energy footprints — a factor for both operating cost and ESG of new experiences.[9][5]
2. On-device AI (Apple Intelligence / Gemini Nano) moves inference from cloud to handset, easing network/server power but raising device-side power draw and upgrade/e-waste lifecycle questions.[25][15]
3. Hardware proliferation expands material load: as home humanoids, smart glasses, ambient wearables and spatial headsets multiply — even as MR/VR shipments swung -42.8% in 2025 — manufacturing, rare-metal use and e-waste lifecycle management become environmental questions for new experiences.[35][27]

Coming soon