Nick White, head of strategic research, Attest
The landscape’s moving fast, but three shifts feel clear-cut. Synthetic audiences and digital personas will grow fast, allowing quick test-and-learn cycles in creative and product development. They’ll free budgets for deeper, more strategic work.

AI as the ‘heavy lifter’. Expect a bigger push to use AI for the admin-heavy parts of research: survey building, top-level analysis, fieldwork quality and bot-response detection, so humans can focus on strategy, storytelling and client partnership.

Qual at Scale. AI-moderation is maturing quickly. 2025 was about new entrants; 2026 will be about crowding, as brands chase more human-like qualitative conversations and the ability to quantify them at scale.

Ray Poynter, managing director, The Future Place and co-founder, ResearchWiseAI
The rate of change will increase, the gap between the early adopters and laggards will increase, there will be breakthroughs and there will be screw-ups.

James Endersby, chief executive, Opinium
AI will become the invisible co-pilot of insight, taking care of the heavy lifting so people can focus on creativity, empathy and strategic thinking, in partnership with their clients. The challenge will be using it responsibly, and making sure it amplifies human brilliance rather than replacing it with a dull, unimaginative clone, one that churns out soulless charts and buzzword bingo instead of ideas that actually make people think, and deliver genuine insights with impact.

Alexandra Kuzmina, innovation director, MMR Research
I think 2026 will be the year AI in insights stops being the headline and becomes a default setting. It will be so embedded that the real question won’t be whether we use AI, but what new answers it helps uncover.

AI agents will sit inside everyday workflows, making client decision-making more dynamic and connected. Software-as-a-service and agents will merge, pushing organisations to fix their data ‘plumbing’ so agents work across systems. As an industry we are well placed for this, because we already work across messy, mixed data sources.

I hope 2026 is also the year we start talking seriously about the AI carbon tax, and that AI-enabled research becomes part of the sustainability story for the products we help create.

Marie Ridgley, chief executive, UK insights division, Kantar
We’re moving from AI experimentation to AI application. The number of pilots and tools developed has multiplied, but now the crucial question is: how is this tech growing the business? The real breakthrough will come from stitching tools and platforms together to increase our capability and unlock complex solutions – that will be the really exciting development in the tech this coming year.

Frédéric-Charles Petit, chief executive, Toluna
2026 will be the year AI starts to be used at true scale, moving from experimentation to industrialised adoption across the insight value chain.

Crawford Hollingworth, global chair and founder, The Behavioural Architects
It is very much ‘hello from the other side’ – clients can now see where AI tools and bots can work effectively, and clearly where they are failing.  2026 will be the time for the contextual, cultural and ethical human read insights.

Jane Frost, chief executive, MRS
Our sector has been charging ahead in adopting and integrating AI to improve efficiency and deliver business impact.  Understandably, this has often been led by larger agencies with the time and resources to invest in exploring the opportunities the tech provides.

As we head into 2026, my focus will be on ensuring research organisations of all sizes can harness the benefits of AI to support the excellent work they do.  In fact, it is actually smaller businesses where these efficiencies can have the biggest impact – removing the drudge work and freeing up teams to focus on higher-value creative thinking that generates real impact.  Far from being fearful of AI, I would encourage all researchers to show an open mind, explore how their peers have integrated the technology and consider how it could work for them.

Kelly Beaver, chief executive officer UK and Ireland, Ipsos
AI has been a significant enabler of speed within the research process, and given the rate at which world events are happening these days, speed has never been more important to our clients.

AI has also allowed us to add a number of tools to our arsenal, including creating interactive persona bots, quick turnaround-creative testing and, of course, synthetic data, which AI is facilitating the use of at scale. I expect we will continue to see developments that push research even further and faster in 2026.

Babita Earle, international managing director, Zappi
In 2026, AI will shift from experimentation to real adoption across insights teams. We’ll continue to see broader adoption and some more democratisation of consumer insight, with more insight professionals moving into AI-focused roles and more AI/data roles being created across organisations.

I hope it’s not too slow; insights teams have historically been slow to adopt new tech. Marketing didn’t wait, and programmatic tools surged ahead. If we don’t want history to repeat itself, researchers need to dive head-first into AI – thoughtfully and with trusted partners – to ensure insight leads the rest of the organisation rather than following.

Will Ullstein, UK chief executive, YouGov
AI is reshaping client expectations, from automation efficiencies to bold product innovation. However, models still struggle with ‘hallucinations,’ raising fresh concerns over methodology, transparency, and bias.

In reality, many clients now demand full control and clear visibility, often limiting reliance on AI-generated insights. At the same time, there’s growing appetite for AI to boost data quality by detecting fraud and automating cleaning.

Danielle Todd, director, The Forge and WIRe London lead
AI will increasingly act as an integral partner in taking on the data load, and freeing insight professionals and marketers to do deeper, more imaginative work. I think we’re moving away from straightforward efficiency and adopting a mindset more around creating emotional and intellectual bandwidth. I think this mindset shift when it comes to deploying AI, plus the space it creates for us will make the difference in 2026.

Christina Tarbotton, research director, Boxclever
Now that we’re past the initial hurdle of AI’s introduction, I’m hoping we’ll achieve a steadier equilibrium and build more confidence in how we understand and use it.

Suzy Hassan, managing director and co-founder, Potentia
The role of AI for us as a company and within the industry is huge – there are several workflows which benefit from the speed and efficiency of AI, and I believe we need to embrace and harness it to enhance absolutely everything we do as a business.

AI will support us to deliver insights faster and help to polish deliverables, enabling quicker decision making, which in an uncertain market will be invaluable. I see it as an opportunity for growth without constantly adding to the headcount which could make us a more profitable business too, but as a signatory of the MRS Climate Pledge, we also need to be aware of the AI impact on our carbon footprint.

Amanda Roberts, qualitative researcher, consumer strategy, Sky
I’m seeing signs of AI fatigue or outright AI rejection, and have been for a while, from both consumers and brands. Over the last year, I’ve seen lots of content from consumers about how to de-centre AI from your life. For example, how to get around AI summaries on search results.

I’ve also seen multiple brand campaigns that position them as ‘anti-AI’. For example, Polaroid ran a billboard that said: “AI can’t generate sand between your toes”.

In 2026, I think we’ll see a cultural pivot where ‘made by humans’ is the gold standard.

Hasdeep Sethi, group AI lead and data science director, Strat7
2026 will be the year of end-to-end AI workflows. We have moved from simple language models to tools that can execute specific tasks. The next step is stitching AI agents together into full, seamless workflows.

We expect established ways of working to shift as agents become better at mimicking real processes. The critical thing is understanding how people actually work, not making assumptions, so agents can support that flow. Companies using AI in a disjointed way often end up wasting time and effort. Companies that take an end-to-end view will gain most, with humans staying in the loop across workflows but relying more on automation.

Christopher Barnes, president, Escalent
The impact will be huge, creating pressure across the industry to consolidate. Faster and cheaper will be the watchword, but better and more meaningful should be the goal.

Daniel Singham, commercial director, Yonder Data Solutions
AI will underpin most analytics and insight work, driving efficiency and enabling always on research, but businesses must prioritise robust governance and ethical standards and keep quality at the heart of the research. If AI impacts the accuracy and robustness of data which businesses will be making informed decisions from, then don’t do it. We need to use it on a case-by-case basis.

Matilda Andersson, managing director, Truth Consulting
More focus on efficiency and less positioning it as the answer to everything. Talent increasingly being measured in AI capabilities. 

Sabine Stork, senior partner, Thinktank Research
It’s going to continue its ascendancy – but given that a lot of the big players seem over-valued financially, there may be an Emperor’s New Clothes moment.