The Year Ahead: AI

1. Elon Musk Will Make AI Movies

Scorsese, Spielberg—and Grok? Elon Musk is turning his chatbot into an auteur, promising a “great” video game and a movie “that is at least watchable” by the end of 2026. Grok Imagine is being trained on snippets from existing games and movies. Of course, the whole endeavour raises the same complicated questions around copyright that have upended the publishing world. Rumours that Grok is training on Hellboy II hit especially hard—the movie’s director, Guillermo del Toro, recently said he would “rather die” than use AI in his films. 

2. Bell Will Build Data Centres Galore

In May, Bell unveiled a $300-million plan to open six new data centres in B.C., leveraging its fibre network and positioning the telecom and media giant as the ultimate energy landlord. The project—set to become the largest AI computer network in Canada—promises domestic growth and data sovereignty while generating a projected $1.5 billion by 2028. California semiconductor startup Groq (not to be confused with Musk’s Grok) has already claimed much of the space in the first Kamloops centre, while Bell’s partnership with Cohere will churn out AI solutions for government and businesses.

3. Canada Will Enter the Chip Wars

The pandemic revealed just how vital semiconductors are: when shipments of these microchip minibrains from places like Taiwan stalled, industries such as auto manufacturing, health care and defence went dark. While the U.S. and China battle for dominance, Canada is going niche. FABrIC, a five-year, $223-million project between Ottawa and research non-profit CMC Microsystems, aims to make the country a leader in compound semiconductors, which run faster and handle heat better than the standard silicon ones. Tech executives are already eyeing Ottawa as a future hub—local semiconductor supplier Ranovus recently invested $100 million to expand its HQ in the capital.

4. Ottawa Will Weigh OpenAI’s Pinch-Me Offer…

At a time when Canada is gagging to expand domestic AI capacity, OpenAI has arrived with an offer to build a cross-country network of data centres powered by our clean energy, promising jobs and global clout. It will also, apparently, boost our sovereignty because the servers would sit on Canadian soil. But if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it might be: under the American Cloud Act, U.S. companies could be compelled, by court order, to disclose data stored on their technology, even when that data lives abroad. While Ottawa makes up its mind, homegrown alternatives are already emerging, like Kevin O’Leary’s proposed data centre in Alberta and Bell’s B.C. network.

5. …While Pushing for Data Sovereignty

Mark Carney has been talking a big game about a sovereign Canadian cloud. In the new federal budget, he put our money where his mouth is: $925 million earmarked over five years to build public digital infrastructure that keeps Canadian data under Canadian control. Right now, the country cedes far too much of it to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, which are bound by U.S. laws. The sense of urgency on this mission has ratcheted up—especially as relations with Washington fray.

6. Coding Degrees Will Become Worthless

We all know The Social Network mythology: earn a computer science degree, learn to code and a six-figure starting salary will follow. But AI has crashed the group chat, and suddenly all that training is as valuable as an English lit major. All of the big employers—Microsoft, Amazon, Meta—have slashed thousands of roles, replacing them with lean teams of tech-savvy babysitters for their AI tools. In 2024, more than 150,000 tech employees were laid off across 551 companies worldwide. Canada was not immune: last year, there were cuts at Cisco, Oracle’s Kitchener office and blockchain firm Consensys. As of early August, tech job postings on Indeed Canada were down 19 per cent from their levels in early 2020.

7. Chief AI Officers Will Join the C-Suite

More than 200 major Canadian companies now employ a chief AI officer, according to a recent Amazon Web Services survey—with more to follow suit. The role is exactly what it sounds like: a human employee (for now) charged with managing and governing the use of AI within an organization. Tech companies led the charge, of course—Cohere nabbed former Meta exec Joelle Pineau for the top AI post in 2025. Institutions like BMO, the University of Western Ontario and Lululemon have all added CAIOs to their ranks, too.  

8. AI Agents Will Do Our Shopping

AI is coming for your to-do list. Think Siri, only she can make travel plans, book plane tickets, hunt down the perfect birthday gift and even complete the purchase, albeit with human signoff. Using past behaviour to predict preferences, this agentic AI can pursue a multi-step goal on its own rather than act on specific prompts (unlike ChatGPT). The end of tedious online research also marks the end of humans as primary users of the internet— AI shoppers will soon be the norm. (Walmart has Sparky, Microsoft has Copilot.) And along with questions around privacy and security, there is also the unanswered puzzle of how to advertise to bots. 

9. Cohere Will Go Public

In August, Canada’s biggest AI multinational partnered with Ottawa to expand the use of machine learning in the public sector. Two months later, it snagged a US$500-million investment, pushing its valuation to US$6.8 billion. Cohere is an industry underdog no more, so when will it go public? “Soon,” says CEO Aidan Gomez, one of three co-founders and University of Toronto grads who launched their startup in 2019. The cash flow from an IPO could fund the expansion of data centres and finally give us a made-in-Canada AI alternative to compete at scale.

10. We’ll Find Love With Our Chatbots

Tech helped create a decade of social isolation—and now it’s trying to fill the void. Among more than 300 active AI companion apps in the global market, almost 130 launched in the first seven months of 2025. Replika is designed to be an empathetic friend, Pi provides a supportive ear for venting and Ash provides mental-health counselling (with all the expected disclaimers). What was once the stuff of sci-fi movies—interacting with bots as buddies, mentors, love interests—is becoming more and more normalized, particularly with young people who spill their daily crises to Snapchat’s My AI chatbot. The red flags are obvious, so Ottawa is considering a restriction for minors who probably won’t remember a time when their phone wasn’t also their friend.