SXSW 2023: Are we moving forward or was the future already here?

This year’s South By South West Festival (SXSW) was more crowded than ever, with the fear of COVID-19 largely over and most people free to fly to the beautiful city of Austin in Texas. Looking back at last year, a year filled with exciting new tech and trends, we can see how far we’ve come.

In 2022, we saw the rise of Web3, NFTs, and the broadly interoperable Metaverse. Web3 promised to be the new era of the internet and we wondered when we could live in the Metaverse, as was promised by Mark Zuckerberg. If we look at the Gartner Hype Cycle of Emerging Tech, the Metaverse and NFT’s have passed the top of the cycle now, and are already moving down. Although the Metaverse was a separate track at SXSW, it did not attract the same attention as last year. It had to make room for Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI).

The new hot buzzword was Artificial Intelligence (AI) again. Almost every topic was based around last year’s development from the company OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT and DALL-E. These innovations have caused a stir in the field of artificial intelligence and have become the center of discussion for many experts and enthusiasts alike. During SXSW, many companies introduced new versions or new implementations of Gen AI; ChatGPT-4 got announced, Google launched their version Bard and Adobe introduced their creative generative AI model Firefly for their products.

However, as American futurist and tech trend reporter Amy Webb points out, these AI tools do not have intuition, and can only reflect the data they’ve been fed. As we increasingly rely on these systems for school, work and governing, we must consider ethical and copyright issues. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s founder, attended the festival to provide perspective on the future of Gen AI. He spoke at length about the company and the possibilities for the future. However, it were clearly the ethical and copyright issues that required more attention, as the interview sparked more questions than answers. He believes that the new generation will figure this all out. He is very optimistic about the future.

Besides the comeback of AI, it felt like the whole festival shared a specific trend across all the talks, films and music. We have a Dutch saying: ‘Oude wijn in nieuwe zakken’ (Old wine in new bottles). It means that we are reusing old things and repurpose them with a new wrapper. The question is: Are we really moving forward with new tech or are we looking at the same tech with a different name? For example, Photoshop has had AI built in for many years with features like filling blanks, and chatbots and voice assistants were a real hype back in the day.

Even the new evolving Metaverse trend seems to refer to things that have been done before. Many people are referring to Roblox, an open-world game or platform where the new generation comes together to socialize, and the Metaverse. But didn’t Second Life, a game or platform from 2003, do the same things? Even for me, back in the days World of Warcraft was a purely digital social platform with a game element, and I’ve made many friends there.

The same phenomenon could be recognized in music. Every year at SXSW, there are many types of music, upcoming artists, new bands and genres to pick from. But this year also brought back some older bands, like New Order and The Zombies. There was a documentary about the underrated success of the band The Zombies. Their success began after the band stopped in 1967, after a frustrating lack of success of their album. Many years later, their album did become successful, but the band no longer existed. Their music was brought back to life in the 00’s and is still relevant for many people to this day.

So, are we moving forward or was the future already here? SXSW was fully packed and crowded this year, and I believe that we are indeed moving forward with all the new tech. I’m curious about what the future will bring. The evolution of technology is based on proven trends that have survived the hype cycle. In my opinion, Gen AI represents real innovation in the tech industry. It’s not just a hype; it will stick around for a while and have a big impact on us, humans. Additionally, the Metaverse may survive the hype cycle and make a comeback in the near future, but probably more in a background role.

I’m excited about what the future will bring at next year’s SXSW!