11 Technology Trends to Watch This Year – The Wall Street Journal

From ways to detect AI-generated imagery to self-driving cars, here’s the tech that will change your life in 2024.
Here are our tech predictions for 2024, starting with AI as far as the…A-eye can see.
We won’t even pretend to know all the things generative AI will do to our devices, our jobs, our lives—and our elections. But we promise you won’t be able to escape it.
Is it real? When photos of a bull walking on train tracks in New Jersey recently went viral, many people’s first thought was, “Did AI make this?” No, the photo was the real deal.
New Jersey Transit/Reuters
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This is the internet challenge of 2024: How do we tell the real from the AI? The generative-AI product flood will continue, but also expect more tools to help us pinpoint artificially generated material.
This graphic depicts a training process to create an image of a cat using generative AI. Illustration: John McColgan
OpenAI, specifically, has promised a feature that will identify whether an image is created by its Dall-E 3 image generator. TikTok has said it is working on ways to detect and automatically label AI-generated content.
John Walton/PA Wire/Zuma
EVs struggle to accelerate
If you’re expecting 2024 to be the Year of the EV Boom, think again. “It’s not that EV sales are down, it’s that the pace of growth is slowing down,” said Barclays analyst Dan Levy.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
Two of the biggest consumer pain points—price and charging—will start to improve. Especially for people looking beyond Tesla. Sometime in 2024, Ford, General Motors, Rivian and others will be able to charge at many of Tesla’s charging sites.
John Walton/PA Wire/Zuma
The clean-tech boom begins
The EV supply chain is enabling hardware companies of all kinds to make use of really big batteries, and the critical “power electronics” that go with them.
Panasonic and Tesla run a joint-venture plant in Sparks, Nev., that produces electric-vehicle batteries around the clock. Photo: Benjamin Spillman/The Reno Gazette-Journal/AP
The relentless rollout of new sources of low-carbon and renewable energy is proceeding apace, including offshore wind, rooftop solar and geothermal power from the earth’s own heat.
Finished solar panels at the First Solar manufacturing plant in Walbridge, Ohio. Photo: Sylvia Jarrus for The Wall Street Journal
Startups—backed by big money—are looking to develop a generation of smaller, safer modular nuclear reactors, too.
A cooling tower at the Constellation Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in Scriba, NY. Photo: Lauren Petracca/Bloomberg News
AI + PC = ?
In 2024, every major manufacturer will aim to give you access to AI on your devices, even when they’re not connected to the internet, which current technology requires.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
Longer life for older gadgets
Internet-connected devices remain tied to their makers after we buy them. And when the makers stop providing services and software updates, they die. A growing number of manufacturers and brands are extending software support.
Caitlin Ochs/Reuters
Apple—which updates iPhones for about six years, and Macs for six to eight years depending on the model—was the gold standard, but it has fallen a bit behind Alphabet’s Google.
Justin Sullivan/Getty
For its new Pixel 8 phones, Google upped support to seven years. The company also said it will provide updates to Chromebooks for up to a decade starting in 2024.
Ed Jones/AFP/Getty
Samsung previously updated phones for just two years, with four years of security patches. It’s now providing 7 years of software and security updates.
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News
Mixed reality meets the real world 
In the early trials of Apple’s Vision Pro, we’ve been impressed with just how natural it is to navigate the digital interface.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
It still is quite a substantial piece of hardware you have to put on your head, however, battery pack and all. Given its price tag and its first-generation status, the Vision Pro isn’t positioned to be a mainstream hit.
Justin Sullivan/Getty
Instead, Apple’s betting on early adopters and software developers to define the killer apps of spatial computing—the idea that we can blend our real lives and digital worlds in new ways. As Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said during the Vision Pro’s introduction, it’s “the beginning of a journey.”
The Vision Pro lets you float familiar apps such as the Safari web browser and Messages. Photo: Apple
Cracks in Apple’s garden walls 
Last year, EU legislation forced Apple to give up its proprietary Lightning port in favor of USB-C on the iPhone 15. This year, EU regulation will push Apple to make additional changes.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
While Apple’s App Store has been the only way to install apps on the iPhone, the EU’s Digital Markets Act aims to change that. It requires the “gatekeepers”—specific tech companies—to stop restricting users from getting apps from outside its own app stores. The deadline to comply is March 7.
Niall Carson/PA Wire/Zuma
Passkeys in more places
Last year, companies including Google, Apple and Amazon moved toward passkeys, a type of login that can replace passwords and two-factor authentication codes.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
Starting next year, Microsoft will roll out passkeys for businesses. A passkey is more secure than a traditional login because each is unique, it won’t work on fake sites designed to trick us and it can’t be stolen from company servers.
Photo illustration: Rachel Mendelson/The Wall Street Journal, iStock (4)
Ride in a self-driving car—no, really
Robotaxis and self-driving vehicles in general had a rough 2023. Yet amid the chaos, there have been winners, such as Alphabet subsidiary Waymo.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
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GM subsidiary Cruise lost its license to operate in California and subsequently laid off about a quarter of its workforce.
A Cruise self-driving car is stopped in the middle of an intersection in San Francisco. Video: Poppy Lynch for The Wall Street Journal
Tesla faced lawsuits over its “full self–driving system” on account of its apparent reliance on human monitoring, despite the marketing. And residents of San Francisco, the self-driving-est city in the U.S., expressed doubts about this technology.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
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Meanwhile, Waymo, is continuing to expand its robotaxi service to more cities. If you travel to Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Austin, Texas, you can hop in one of the company’s driverless taxis today.
A Waymo self-driving car maneuvers in traffic on a busy street in the Mission District of San Francisco. Video: Poppy Lynch for The Wall Street Journal
Another social-media reckoning 
As they seem to every year, Meta and TikTok face massive lawsuits, new laws, curbs from regulators, and the possibility of huge fines.
Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Zuma
In 2024, Meta will have to contend with a grab bag of suits from more than 40 state attorneys general trying to force the company to change features of its products that the AGs allege harm minors.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
Beyond heartbeats and nighttime Zs
Wearable gadgets have long tracked heart rate and sleep. Soon, they’ll be out for blood. Apple has been studying a way to track blood pressure through sensors in the Apple Watch.
Illustration: Jason Schneider
This year—when Apple is expected to commemorate the watch’s 10th anniversary with a new design—the company might finally release the feature. Other wearables may not be far behind.
Photo illustration: Stephanie Aaronson/The Wall Street Journal, Photos: iStock
Samsung has offered blood-pressure measurement on its Galaxy Watches for several years, though the feature isn’t available in the U.S. for regulatory reasons.
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News
Produced by Siemond Chan
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