Farewell crypto, hello generative AI. With the selective amnesia that is one of the defining characteristics of their trade, venture capital investors have already moved on from their unfortunate dalliance with the imploding FTX crypto exchange and fallen in love with the next big thing. This year, they say, will be the breakout year for artificial intelligence. Although that statement might have been made in any of the past few years, this time they really mean it.There are some good reasons to believe this assertion may be true. The launch in November of OpenAI’s ChatGPT language-generation model, with its astonishing ability to generate paragraphs of convincing text at remarkable speed, has opened users’ eyes to the power of generative AI. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, have been trained on vast amounts of data ingested from the internet and are almost instantaneously able to recognise and replicate patterns of text, images, computer code, audio and video. No one is quite sure yet what exactly their killer application will be. But more than 160 start-ups have already been launched to explore the answer.

The promise of generative AI is that it can boost the productivity of workers in creative industries, if not replace them altogether. Just as machines augmented muscle in the industrial revolution, so AI can augment brainpower in the cognitive revolution. This may be particularly good news for jaded copywriters, computer coders, TV scriptwriters and desperate school children late with their homework. But it may also have a big impact on areas as diverse as the automation of customer services, marketing material, scientific research and digital assistants. One intriguing open question is whether it will reinforce the dominance of existing search engines, such as Google’s, or usurp them.

Generative AI is a good example of a broader trend that is taking powerful technologies out of the hands of experts and putting them in those of everyday users. This democratisation of access may have huge implications, and create extraordinary opportunities, for many businesses. The increasing popularity of “l(fā)ow code/no code” software platforms, for example, will enable increasing numbers of non-expert users to create their own powerful mobile and web apps. No longer will product managers be so beholden to their tech teams setting their own agenda.