For Gen Z, AI is no longer a feature
While event organisers discuss the rollout of AI-supported products and features, Gen Z moved from using AI at events to building their entire decision-making around it
What a difference a year can make. Just like last year, I again joined and judged the presentations of business event concepts by second-year students from the Singapore Institute of Technology’s Hospitality and Tourism Management programme - those specialising in Events and Entertainment, across modules in event management, event sales and services, entertainment business, and event experience design.
Their brief was straightforward as well as challenging: review and analyse a recent event industry conference in Singapore, critique its design and execution, and propose future-oriented improvements - integrating trends such as AI, sustainability, hybrid formats and DEI.
In other words, the students were asked to look at the industry as it is, and share what needs to be changed, or added, to serve the specific needs of their own age cohort, Gen Z.
So here we had ten groups of Gen Z students, looking at our industry’s current state of play through their own lens - their skills and strengths, their fears and constraints, and their expectations of how things should work. And this was backed up with societal data about their own age cohort.
That is why sessions like this matter for me: They offer glimpses of the future, not as abstract trends, but grounded in behaviour.
So – what has changed in the past 12 months?
Last year, AI was an application, a feature, a new addition to showcase trendiness. In short: One of several elements that could make a business event better. Visible, discussed, often highlighted.
This year, that framing is gone, and two changes stood out.
First, in the students’ presentations, AI is “in” almost everything - before, during, and after the event. Not just for organisers, but, more notably, for participants themselves. In how they prepare. In how they navigate. In how they engage on site.
Second, and more fundamentally, AI access and use appear to be following the same path digital access did: It is becoming ubiquitous. It is no longer a feature or a differentiator, but, seen from this student generation’s perspective, it is becoming part of their everyday operating system. And you could see the consequences of that shift in their work:
Information is not something to be searched for. It is something to be filtered.
Ideas are not built from scratch. They are assembled, tested and refined, with AI as a constant counterparty in the background.
Interaction is not left to chance. It is structured, guided, and de-risked. Several groups framed networking not as an opportunity, but as a barrier (social anxiety came up repeatedly) and designed formats to lower the threshold for engagement.
None of this was positioned as innovation. It was simply how things will work for them. And the concepts themselves reflected that baseline.
Groups presented attendee journeys that are built around choices rather than fixed programmes. They treat personalisation as a given. They suggest and sketch out event formats that are specifically designed to build up the attendees’ confidence before really connecting them with the full event.
AI sat underneath it all, enabling, but rarely visible.
For our events industry, the “obvious” reaction might be to mirror what is seen: more AI, more automation, more visible technology during the event. But, I argue, that would be a misreading of what became clear as group after group presented their work.
Because in these concepts, AI does most of its work before the event. It helps decide what to attend, who to meet, and what matters. It prepares the participant. In this way, when someone arrives, much of the filtering has already happened, and the event is no longer the entry point – it becomes the place where those prior selections are tested.
My take:
This adds to our industry conversation on how to serve industry communities not just during event days, but just as well before and after and in between event editions. If I were to add all the suggestions that the sudents made and spread them out across a timeline, then the interaction with the event and its community begins months before the event, and lasts up to a year afterwards.
And – more mid-term: If AI – driven by models and perceived realities . becomes part of the operating layer for how a generation discovers, filters and decides: which personal, societal, and behavioural skills are being accelerated, and which are being quietly compressed or bypassed? And what does that mean for how we design events - not as platforms for content or networking, but as environments where those capabilities are actually built?
Read on:
If you want to review what the previous year’s class suggested - I wrote about that here.