If there's one lesson to be learned from 2025, it's that IT professionals are tired of the AI hype. Over the last year, AI has become inevitable. Vendors touted “AI-powered” products on everything from ticketing systems to washing machines. The product launch promised massive increases in productivity, instant expertise, and a future where work is done automatically. For a while, the AI hype worked, but as the years went on, “AI” became just a buzzword.
AI adoption has skyrocketed dramatically, with Spiceworks' State of IT 2026 report showing current usage jumping from just 23 percent in 2023 to 52 percent in 2025. The industry's obsession with AI was on full display at CES 2026. The world's biggest technology show once again revolves around artificial intelligence, with AMD CEO Lisa Su predicting that AI adoption will explode from 1 billion users to 5 billion users in 5 years during the keynote..
But contrast that message with companies like Dell retreating from AI-first marketing.admits that aggressive AI branding confuses buyers more than it convinces. This is a clear sign that the conversation around AI is changing and blind enthusiasm is being replaced with more grounded expectations.
From AI excitement to frustration
A common sentiment across the Spiceworks community is frustration with the ubiquity of AI. In a recent poll, users cited AI as the trend they most want to see in 2025. Not because the technology isn't useful, but because the way it's being promoted feels careless.
Spiceuser Alawford said: “The industry has no idea what to do with this, but it's still consuming huge amounts of RAM resources and other resources, and the prices of other resources are going up.” AI capabilities are often bundled into tools whether customers request them or not, which means higher prices and increased hardware requirements.
Spiceuser Marcel6452 shared a similar opinion, saying, “AI solves problems that don't exist just for big tech companies to increase their profits. For the average job, there's a lot more work to verify that AI results are not hallucinations.”
If not implemented properly, AI can create extra steps instead of saving time. This is because if the model is wrong, someone needs to check the output and correct the mistake.
Despite these challenges, AI will still be a core technology in 2026
Despite the frustrations, many Spiceworks members still use AI regularly in the workplace. They're just doing it their way, in a way that makes sense and adds value.
As the hype wanes, many IT professionals are still looking for practical ways to leverage AI in their work. Rather than relying on AI for complete automation, users are applying AI to specific high-value tasks such as code optimization, design assistance, and troubleshooting, and are often using AI to bypass time-consuming vendor support processes.
Some treat AI more like a thought partner, using it to brainstorm ideas and pressure test decisions while maintaining careful human oversight of accuracy. Others are leveraging AI for more process-driven tasks, such as researching technical topics and refining emails and documents to strike the right balance between clarity and friendliness.
The common characteristic of all these use cases is that they are practical, boring, but effective. They also treat the AI like a junior assistant that still needs supervision, rather than trusting it blindly. These use cases are typically where AI is best suited.
Consensus: The real problem isn't AI, it's how we use it.
AI isn't going anywhere, but the era of blind enthusiasm may finally be over. Looking at all of these perspectives on AI, we see that the problem is often not the technology itself, but how it has been marketed, monetized, and pushed into places where it doesn't belong. IT professionals are not anti-AI, they are anti-hype. They want AI tools that solve real problems and add real value without creating new problems.
Looking ahead to 2026, the organizations that succeed with AI will be the ones that stop chasing the headlines and start treating AI as infrastructure rather than a magical tool that can solve all the world's problems with a click.
What do you think about AI? How do you use it in your daily life? Join the conversation about AI in the Spiceworks Community!
