The 2026 NAB Show is three weeks away. And all signs point to it being “AI Everywhere All At Once.”
Wall Street has made it abundantly clear that if you don’t have AI in your product, you will never, ever see another dime in funding. Recently, I swear, a press release crossed my desk saying that pencils are adding an AI module to improve graphite flow across uneven paper surfaces.
Is this irrational? Yes. Is it sustainable? No. But that doesn’t make it any the less real.
As the media industry continues to undergo fundamental change, no vendor wants to be caught missing the AI bandwagon. While there are many ways machine-learning can add value to the media tools we use, the market is expecting far more than that.
Today’s market demands more than just adding AI in products. It applauds AI replacing people in the creation of media itself. Generative AI is getting so good at generating video that it has its own name: “AI-slop.” The battle for regulation of AI has shifted from industry to government to the courts. No one seems interested in or capable of controlling it.
Almost every day we read about lay-offs by companies replacing human workers with AI agents. Salesforce, Block and Intuit come instantly to mind. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost just in the last six months. White collar workers have never faced this level of job disruption.
Closer to home, the media industry continues to be under siege from rapid technological change driven by AI, global competition, shrinking budgets, evolving consumer preferences, fragmented distribution, distracted audiences… the list lengthens weekly.
The NAB Show is also undergoing change. Attendance by visitors from outside the US is likely to drop significantly due to the current administration’s irrational anti-immigration rhetoric and more restrictive visa rules. According to Forbes, February 2026, marked “the ninth straight month of decline in foreign visitation.” Canadian visitors, alone, dropped 22% year-over year.
The Show itself is quickly switching its focus from traditional media to “creators.” Many smaller companies that exhibited for years no longer feel welcome.
So what should we do? The short answer is that no one really knows.
Last night I watched Ken Burns’ stunning, two-part documentary on the American Dust Bowl, the largest man-made ecological disaster in history. Caused by excessive plowing of native grasses to grow more thirsty wheat, combined with a decade long drought and compounded by the Great Depression, it took a decade to resolve through a combination of government programs, changes in farming techniques, and the end to the drought. During it, though, times were bleak.
I don’t have any doubt we are going to get through this, but the other side won’t look anything like the past. Just like the farmers in the Dust Bowl, not all of us will make it. Those of us who survive will need to change – our tools, our techniques and, most definitely, our business model.
AI companies keep harping on how AI enables one person to do everything. That may be true, but, if so, it is a key vulnerability. For me, the magic of media lies in collaboration. The pooling of skills between talented individuals to create something greater than one person can do on their own.
There’s creative and emotional strength in a tight-knit group. Like musicians creating music, one person may have the idea, but the group working together makes it better.
In the future of media, telling compelling stories using pictures will be important. But even more important will be infusing those stories with our humanity. AI can only copy what’s been done before. It can change the colors, or the position, but it can’t think outside the box.
We can. And that, I think, is the skill that will allow us to survive.
