AI Vitals: three AI shifts worth building on

As we close off the month of love, as many would put it, we thought we would highlight a few things we are loving in the world of AI at the moment. We spend a lot of time immersed in disruption. It’s real, and it requires curiosity, a willingness to question the assumptions your business has been running on. 

But this month, let’s focus on the opportunity. Here are three things we are excited about and we think you should be too.  

1. Relationships are becoming your greatest strategic asset 

BCG published its Consumer AI Disruption Index, while Anthropic released its 2026 Agentic Coding Trends Report. Different perspectives, one clear signal: AI disruption is no longer emerging, it’s active. 

When AI overviews appear in search, most users don’t click through. And a growing majority of consumers believe AI agents can secure better deals than they can themselves. It would be easy to frame this as a visibility crisis. We see it as a relationship opportunity. 

The brands best positioned in AI-mediated environments aren’t simply investing hardest in AI. They’re the ones with the strongest direct relationships through loyalty, owned platforms, meaningful value exchange. As AI intermediates more discovery, competitive advantage shifts toward brands customers actively choose. 

The question is no longer how we appear in AI journeys, but how we build ecosystems customers want to return to directly. 

2. Design is evolving from journeys to intelligent environments  

Fixed flows and predetermined journeys assume a customer who moves predictably. That assumption is eroding. Interfaces are becoming intent-driven, adapting in real time to what a user is trying to do, not guiding them through what a business has pre-mapped. 

This changes the design brief fundamentally. The question shifts from what is the journey? to what are the conditions that earn trust at every point, including the ones we can't see? For experience designers, that's both a bigger challenge and a more interesting one. 

3. AI gives you leverage, when judgement is applied  

AI can now handle a significant portion of routine development work autonomously. That's genuinely powerful, and genuinely risky if the human layer thins out too quickly. 

The teams moving well aren't the ones using AI to go faster. They're the ones using it to go further, with clear architectural principles, strong oversight, and the discipline to build foundations that compound rather than constrain. The pace AI enables is only an advantage if the judgement directing it is sound. 

That's where we come in.