If you want to understand where the future of tech is headed, forget the big conferences. Take a look at all the creations at AI hackathons.
Over the past weeks, I’ve hosted AI hackathons across the U.K.—from the ivory towers of the University of Oxford to grassroots communities like Women in AI—and what I’ve seen has changed the way I think about who gets to build technology, and why. The shift is quiet but seismic: AI is turning creativity into the new superpower. Not scale. Not code. Not funding. Just the ability to notice a tiny friction in your life—and decide to fix it.
One of my favorite submissions was a simple app built by a solo participant: it helped you craft the perfect reply to your girlfriend’s message. That’s it. No ambition to raise venture capital. No five-year product roadmap. Just a tool to solve a very real—and very human—problem. As AI makes it possible to prototype ideas in minutes, builders are thinking smaller. More personal. More playful. And, ironically, more meaningful.
We’ve spent the last decade being told to “think big” in tech. But what if the most important ideas ahead aren’t big at all?
From Code to Curiosity
There’s something deeply refreshing about watching participants build for themselves, not for a theoretical “total addressable market.” At Oxford, one student created an “Oxford Hoodie Generator,” blending university lore and inside jokes into hyper-specific apparel designs. In another hackathon, a South African participant built an AI-powered fashion try-on app that celebrated regional heritage and culture. These projects weren’t trying to go viral. They were trying to be true. And in that, they revealed a different kind of ambition: to re-personalize a web that’s become too generic.
After years of platform dominance and algorithmic sameness, our digital world has started to feel flat. What I see now—through these hyper-local, deeply specific apps—is a movement in the opposite direction. Builders are reclaiming their contexts, their humor, their memories. The internet is getting weird again. Thank goodness for that.
Another surprising outcome? The solo wave. You no longer need a co-founder, a pitch deck or even a developer background to build something useful. AI-assisted tools have made it possible for one person to ideate, build and ship in a weekend.
At our Women in AI event, I saw participants—many with zero coding background—build minimalist journaling tools, book recommendation engines, and educational games on their own. These weren’t “demo” projects. They were polished, personal and ready to use. The traditional gatekeeping of software development is eroding, replaced by a new metric: How imaginative can you be?
Some of the most delightful apps came from people who didn’t even think of themselves as builders. A mum created a space-themed math quiz for her child. Another participant built a Duolingo-style flashcard system for law school. Someone else made a cocktail recipe generator that actually had taste. These apps weren’t optimized for scale. They were optimized for joy.
What Happens When Everyone Can Build?
We are entering a new era where software is no longer the domain of the technical elite. It’s becoming a playground for the creatively curious. AI is acting as a multiplier—not replacing developers but multiplying the number of people who can build.
This shift doesn’t just change who gets to create. It changes what gets created. It means fewer lowest-common-denominator apps and more tools that reflect personal nuance, local humor or niche needs. The kinds of things that would never get greenlit in a boardroom, but that make the internet a richer place to be.
It’s tempting to ask: Which of these apps will become unicorns? But maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the real revolution isn’t in what we’re building but in who feels powerful enough to try.
Christel Buchanan is the founder of ChatAndBuild, an AI-native platform that lets anyone turn ideas into working apps—no code required. She previously led international expansion at Twitter and writes frequently about the intersection of creativity, technology and identity.
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