There’s a strong chance artificial intelligence is heading toward its own “Google moment.” Before Google, the internet already existed for decades. Researchers, academics, and technical users knew how powerful it was, but for everyday people, it was messy, confusing, and hard to navigate. Google didn’t invent the internet—it made it usable. Suddenly, anyone could find what they wanted in seconds. That single shift changed everything.
AI appears to be on a similar path. Right now, we’re in the early phase where the tools are impressive but fragmented. You have different apps, models, prompts, and workflows. But eventually, there will likely be one dominant, general AI interface that feels personal and universal. One AI per person. People won’t just say “I’m using AI.” They’ll say, “I’m talking to my Emma,” or “my Mike,” or “my Sarah.” That AI will have a consistent personality, memory, and context, and it will act as the main gateway to information, tasks, and decisions—just like Google became the gateway to the web.
That moment hasn’t fully arrived yet, but it feels close. Probably a few years out.
The first major inflection point already happened, though. In November 2022, ChatGPT was released, and AI suddenly captured the world’s attention. AI had existed for years before that. It was already being used in research labs, recommendation engines, and enterprise systems. What changed wasn’t the intelligence itself—it was the interface. Being able to simply chat with a powerful language model made AI accessible to everyone.
If you want an internet parallel, that moment was similar to when Netscape and Mozilla browsers appeared in the mid-1990s. The internet didn’t suddenly come into existence then. It just became visible, approachable, and useful to the general public. That visibility sparked mass adoption, huge interest, and eventually massive investment.
AI is now following that same trajectory. The chat interface unlocked curiosity, funding, and experimentation at a global scale. The next phase is refinement and consolidation—moving from many tools to one trusted, personal AI that feels as natural as opening a browser or typing into a search bar.
That’s the real shift ahead: not just smarter AI, but simpler, more human access to it.