AI technical capabilities are exploding, but sophisticated use crawls | Synthetic personas exaggerate demographics | AI hurts education when used wrong | Professor Brad Myers is a UX hero | In the future, we’ll all be Agatha Christie | Mental accounting gives users separate budgets for separate expenses | Grok releases upgraded image model

AI agents expand user tasks | Agentic AI makes expertise more valuable, not less | Users need control over the complexity of AI results | Constraints help users | Meta launched a new image model, Muse Image | ByteDance upgrades its image model to Seedream 5 Pro | Comparing the leading image models | GPT receives a major upgrade to v. 5.6 Sol

Halfway through 2026, AI is evolving faster than expected, but usability is struggling to keep pace. I graded my 18 predictions on autonomous agents, compute shortages, and interface design to separate the hype from reality.

Claude Design | AI Does User Testing | AI Use Crosses 50% | GPT-Images-2 | GPT 5.5 | DeepSeek 4 Summary: Claude Design should be used differently than canvas-based design tools | AI conducts user testing and can now see what’s happening on the screen | For the first time, more than 50% of employed Americans use AI at work | OpenAI recaptures leadership in AI image generation with new, highly accurate model | Two upgraded AI models, GPT 5.5 and DeepSeek 4

OpenAI to emphasize usability | Integrated software | Comparing multi-shot AI video models | Grok’s image generation model receives an upgrade | AI use up in the workplace, and employees who use AI now worry less about losing their jobs to AI

Apple Computer 50 years anniversary | The New UX for AI | Excellent AI support chat from Substack | New reasoning image model: Luma Uni-1 thinks through what to draw | AI is more creative than humans and will likely get even more creative in the future with more compute | Upgraded AI music model Suno 5.5