The Analogue Rebellion: Has the AI Glut/Slop created the "IRL" Gold Rush?
Welcome to 2026.
The rapid acceleration and exponential growth of generative AI have characterised the past three years. We have watched, and all marvelled at its capabilities, and been anxious at the speed of development. The pressure faced by individuals and companies alike to merge, automate, and replace has been unstoppable.
For my first post of the new year, I want to flip that narrative and give attention to a movement I see taking shape and gaining momentum, the Analogue Revival and ‘IRL’ Gold Rush.
I may or may not have over-indexed to the other side (time will tell) to make pertinent points that I value.
This is definitely an opinion piece, and you should read it as such.
My intention again is simple: ‘Building a Human-centric Augmented AI world’ vs. AI automation.
The technology world was focused on LLM models, AI Agents, and automated workflows. A powerful cultural counter-current has begun to form beneath the surface. It doesn’t have a central headquarters, but sociologists and analysts are starting to give it names: The "Human-Premium" shift, the "Analogue Revival," or, most commonly, the "IRL" (In Real Life) trend. If 2024 was about peak AI hype, then 2025 was surely the year of AI testing and adoption. Is 2026 poised to be one in which humans recalibrate themselves to play to their strengths?
Defining the IRL Trend
The premise of the IRL trend is simple: when synthetic content becomes infinite and virtually free, biological reality becomes scarce and expensive. As we wade ever deeper into comment sections filled with bots arguing against one another, or the hiring ATS systems reading AI-generated CVs, the web sometimes feels more automated, with more synthetic media and with less genuine context. The IRL trend is backlash. It is a collective that recognises that there are more measures of content richness and value than efficiency alone. Humanity is beginning to treat moments of unmediated, confirmable interaction between people not merely as a choice that is increasingly available, but increasingly as something luxurious and rare.
Signals from the Real World
This is not merely grumbling by neo-Luddites but an observable shift across professionals, industries, and cultures alike.
The Cultural & Brand Response:
Brands are eschewing perfection in the digital realm and embracing the real world. Dove has recently declared that its portrayals of women will never be developed or altered by AI.
"No Frills" phones are on the rise. Heineken's most recent campaign concept, "Boring Phone", at social functions cuts you off from digital connections, making conversation with real, live people necessary.
Some content creators are getting in on the act as well. They tell their audience they work by their own hand and mind with a mark "NOT BY AI" badge.
Industries Drawing Battle Lines:
The most evident areas of information and communication technologies in which "IRL versus AI" conflicts have occurred are those based on human creativity. Faced with the prospect of digital replacements for live writers and actors on film, Hollywood saw widespread production shutdowns and delays.
Tennessee’s ELVIS Act is one signal of a broader push by artists and the music industry for guardrails on AI voice replication, including proposals at the federal level.
Most revealing is the Education sector. Having equated technology with progress for so long, there is now a growing discussion about returning to oral or handwritten examinations. Some educators argue that human knowledge can be verified only in an analogue world.
The Governance of Reality:
Some legislators are no longer subscribing to the "move fast and break things" ethos.
Through its EU AI Act, the European Union has given hope of a balance between human rights and pure Innovation. Judging by how GDPR influenced brands and organisations, this may become a default industry standard.
As more labour data begins to pour in, will governments change their approach to AI ethics and Governance?
Reading the Tea Leaves of the Industry:
The event industry is benefiting from the "Handshake" Premium. Far from being supplanted by virtual alternatives, the entire global events industry (corporate, sports, music, and luxury combined) is projected to reach approximately $1.5 trillion by 2025 (Source: Allied Market Research / SkyQuest). In a world of remote work and AI-commoditised content, in-person meetings have become critical cultural anchors.
Companies are beginning to reorient their budgets from software costs to travel expenses, realising that although AI may abstract the main points of a keynote, it cannot program trust or generate the serendipitous "hallway track" conversations that lead to real transactions.
The Wake-Up Call: Augmented versus Autonomous
Just so I am clear about my message here. The IRL trend is not a rejection of AI or the technology industry, but a rejection of the dehumanisation that so many AI maximalists are pushing.
This massive, glaring reverse is the most deafening wake-up call yet for the AI industry. The market is telling you at the top of its lungs that it does not want to live in a world of synthetic media where people are primary spectators. In 2025, I have argued many times in my posts that a human-centred AI strategy is the only balanced way to adopt it, and this countertrend validates that: we must, as much as possible, pursue the vision of Augmented AI and Autonomous AI in niche areas related to human-centric causes.
If you are building a balanced human-centric future, you are only creating AI tools that enhance human abilities, extend one's imaginative reach, and help us address complex questions. However, if your business model is based on flooding the whole sector with cheap imitations of human labour in the hope of replacing humans altogether, then you may be going against a cultural current that seems to be gaining momentum.
This truly is an inflexion point not only in the story of technological revolutions but in the story of humanity itself.
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