Remember when AI was just a cool tool to help you automate tasks and not, you know, a full-blown existential crisis? Yeah, 2024 had other plans.
Last year, AI went from “helpful assistant” to “main character energy”—stealing headlines, causing meltdowns, and making the internet even weirder than usual. From deepfake disasters to chatbots having feelings, it was a year of pure AI-fueled chaos.
So, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane and relive the moments that made us all question reality.
AI Models That Went Off the Rails
Big AI companies spent all of 2024 trying to convince us that large language models were getting smarter and safer—which would have been great if they didn’t also get creepier.
Take chatbots that developed “personalities”—a feature that was supposed to make them more user-friendly but instead led to people falling in love with their AI assistants (yep, that happened). At the same time, models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini were getting increasingly confident about completely wrong answers, making them sound like that one guy at the bar who swears he “knows a guy” for everything.
Deepfake Madness
AI-generated deepfakes went mainstream in the worst way possible. Celebrities, politicians, and random people on the internet found themselves starring in videos they never made. Social media platforms scrambled to add AI detection tools, but by the time they rolled out, the damage was already done.
The worst part? Even when AI-generated content was labeled as fake, people still fell for it. Turns out, once you break reality, you can’t just tape it back together.
AI Lawsuits, Bans, and Regret
While some companies went all-in on AI, others hit the brakes—hard. Schools, governments, and even tech firms started banning AI tools outright after realizing they were training on copyrighted data, leaking private information, or just being wildly unpredictable.
Meanwhile, Hollywood had its own AI-induced identity crisis. Writers and actors went on strike over AI-generated scripts and digital likenesses—because nobody wants to get replaced by an algorithm (especially one that doesn’t understand sarcasm).
The AI Job Apocalypse (That Didn’t Happen… Yet)
All year long, headlines screamed about AI taking jobs—and while automation did disrupt industries, it didn’t quite lead to the mass unemployment event some experts predicted. Instead, businesses found themselves struggling to figure out where AI actually made sense—because, surprise, throwing an AI chatbot into customer service doesn’t magically make people like dealing with robots.
So, What Now?
If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that AI is here to stay—but it’s still figuring itself out. Tech companies will keep pushing the boundaries, regulators will keep playing catch-up, and the rest of us will keep trying to separate the useful AI from the absolute nonsense.
Here’s hoping 2025 is the year AI finally stops trying to be everything and just focuses on being useful.