AI is everywhere—until you leave New York

The future feels inevitable inside the tech bubble.

Every week I meet a founder building in the AI space.

Some repurpose existing tools like ChatGPT for narrow use cases across law, media, and education. Others test more novel applications or pursue research-intensive work that sounds like science fiction.

One founder I met during New York Tech Week is working on an AI-powered video application that can transform basic iPhone footage into expensive-looking, studio-level production quality.

Hollywood in your pocket, directed by a bot.

Another is developing a platform that lets users generate convincing AI videos of themselves, speaking about any topic. You can now have a scalable, virtual clone with just a few selfies and a voice recording.

One financial data startup, which I profiled in April, is leveraging AI in an attempt to build a more nimble and affordable Bloomberg Terminal.

Demos like these have become the background noise of my week.

Strange to say, but I seem to have found myself in a front-row seat to the rewiring of reality.

AI can now generate synthetic versions of reality that are indistinguishable from the real thing. It can imitate your voice, animate your likeness, and compress billion-dollar legacy products into a few well-written prompts.

None of this is theoretical. These tools exist and work well.

And in cities like New York and San Francisco, they already feel pervasive.

But at this moment the buzz doesn’t extend far beyond the coasts. The AI revolution is profoundly local.

While AI has accelerated my own work and business, it’s still a fringe concept for the majority of the working world.

Not everyone attends happy hours with AI engineers, meets world-class operators for coffee, or walks to work in the shadow of Manhattan skyscrapers.

Proximity to innovation has a way of distorting reality. New York offers such a dense tech ecosystem it feel as if widespread adoption of AI has already arrived.

But that just isn’t the case. I am indeed inside a bubble.

Outside a handful of progressive metropolitan hubs, AI is unfamiliar, abstract and irrelevant.

Then again, the internet existed for a decade before it became a household plug in. Smartphones launched as expensive novelties before we realized we could not leave home without them.

Technology does not go mainstream quickly. Even when engineers build something reality-shattering, they don’t change the world until they become invisible.

AI today is still in its “interface” era. You still have to think about it when you use it. Most of these new tools demand prompting and intention for compelling results.

That friction curbs its reach to other cities. It’s why for most people AI is still a curious plaything for tinkerers and nerds, rather than an asset to teachers, warehouse managers, or travel agents.

To be clear, nothing I’ve tested is perfect. ChatGPT and Perplexity still have their kinks, as do models from Google and Meta.

But the novelty is compelling enough to tolerate the bugs. Progress has been so rapid that early-adopters like myself no longer need convincing.

But again, that is a view unique to New York.

The future has always started with delusion and emerged in pockets. The real inflection point will arrive only after 1) these conversations become pervasive, and 2) people stop talking about AI altogether.

Just as no one discusses using the internet or scrolling an iPhone, at some point AI will just be another technology that works so well it’s forgotten.

And when that happens, you won’t need a New York zip code to realize it.

Phil Rosen
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, Opening Bell Daily