Technology & Science
Year-End 2025 AI Crossroads: Mass Adoption Meets Mounting Backlash
As 2025 closed, artificial intelligence shifted from pilot projects to a core instrument across politics, finance, creative industries and consumer tech, triggering record investment and sweeping deployment even as deepfakes, hallucinations and safety lapses forced calls for regulation ahead of the 2026 cycle.
Focusing Facts
- Indian AI-focused start-ups attracted $1.24 billion in 2025 funding—up 60 % YoY—while total start-up funding slipped to $9.94 billion.
- Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK unveiled an AI portal for its 2026 manifesto weeks after rival deepfake videos of C. N. Annadurai and other leaders went viral in mid-2025.
- NewsGuard’s September 2025 study reported top chatbots’ hallucination rate had climbed to 35 %, vs. 18 % in 2024.
Context
Technological surges often reach a reckoning: radio’s 1920s boom demanded the U.S. Radio Act of 1927, and social media’s 2010–2016 ascent birthed GDPR by 2018. 2025 looks like that pivot point for AI. Decades-long trends toward digitisation, cheaper compute and venture-led disruption converged with generative models to embed AI in electioneering, stock-market narratives, law practice and even eyewear. Yet the same ubiquity exposed structural limits—errant outputs, exploitation, safety gaps—that now pressure governments and industry to impose guardrails. Whether 2025 is remembered as the Cambrian explosion or the speculative bubble of AI will hinge on 2026’s response: mature standards could entrench AI as 21st-century infrastructure, while a regulatory or trust backlash could slow adoption, altering the arc of automation for the rest of the century.
Perspectives
Pro-business financial media
e.g., 24/7 Wall St., The Financial Express, NDTV — Present AI as an unprecedented economic growth engine and investment opportunity, from Alphabet’s soaring share price to India adding $1.7 trillion to GDP. Hyped market narratives can inflate valuations and downplay social or ethical downsides that might dent investor optimism, as the articles largely ignore failures or regulatory headwinds.
Technology-risk watchdog outlets
e.g., Forbes, International Business Times UK — Argue 2025 exposed AI’s dangerous misfires—hallucinations, alignment drift, labour harms—and warn that 2026 must pivot to regulation and safety. By foregrounding spectacular failures and worst-case scenarios, these outlets can overemphasise doom, boosting clicks and advocacy while giving less space to successful deployments.
Local Indian political press
e.g., The Times of India — Depicts AI as a rapidly normalised campaign weapon in Tamil Nadu elections, with deepfakes intensifying partisan battles and ethical anxieties. Sensational focus on scandal-worthy deepfakes and party skirmishes may overshadow broader socioeconomic impacts or national policy context to captivate regional readers.