The Rise of Consumer AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a significant part of consumer reality.

- KITTY AGARWAL

Many of us are spending more time talking to AI assistants like ChatGPT to draft communications and build knowledge, interacting with AI customer support agents while buying products or escalating customer issues and consuming AI-generated content—often without consciously realising it.

Estimates suggest ~2bn people globally use AI tools. We live in a world today where our therapist, friend, shopping assistant, teacher, travel guide and many other on-demand identities could well be AI.

Large language models have evolved rapidly into powerful, general-purpose platforms capable of writing, reasoning, designing, coding and more. This has created a significant opportunity for founders to harness these models and build products at the application layer focused on specific user needs—with moats centred around data, context and distribution.

We see a lot of excitement alongside healthy scepticism. Are we retrofitting AI into existing consumer solutions or building AI-native solutions to consumer problems? Is AI really adding any value or is it just a buzzword? The answers are becoming clearer.

Greater Access

From the user's perspective, new consumer AI start-ups have dramatically improved affordability and personalisation across many services. Historically, services like personal assistants, stylists or wealth advisers are premium offerings due to high human costs. AI changes this equation by making these affordable to the mass market while enabling consistent quality outcomes.

More importantly, AI enables personalisation at scale. Instead of blanket solutions designed for cohorts of “similar” users, products can adapt to the individual—learning from past behaviour and preferences.