The 2026 State of Demos: AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job (But It Should Build Your Demos)

If you believe the headlines, you’d expect AI to run everything under the sun — even demos.

We wanted to know if that was actually what people wanted.

So, we surveyed over 500 Solutions Engineers and Presales Leaders for our State of Demos 2026 Report.

The results? The AI Avatar “revolution” is DOA.

97% of respondents said AI Demo Avatars will not be the top trend of 2026.

Buyers aren’t asking for robo-demos, and demoers don’t trust AI. They both want a return to authenticity: unscripted, transparent, and human demos.

But realism comes with a massive hidden cost.

The Authenticity Paradox

Here’s the bind modern SEs find themselves in:

1. Buyers demand realism. They want to see the product live, with data that looks like theirs, tackling use cases that matter to them.
2. Realism is expensive. To deliver that experience, SEs are drowning in technical debt.

Our data shows that while SEs value “Realism,” their workload pays the price.

69% of SEs rank demo prep and maintenance time as their #1 challenge.

They aren’t spending their days solutioning or crafting interesting POCs. They’re spending hours tinkering with bad demo data and resetting environments.

The “Live Production” Gamble

Because buyers are allergic to “fake” click-throughs, SEs are taking massive risks to show them the real thing.

A staggering 93% of respondents still demo on a Live Production environment.

They’re risking bugs, unexpected updates, and data collisions — all to prove the product is real. It’s a gamble, but when you’re chasing a seven-figure deal, it’s a gamble you shouldn’t have to take.

The “Do It Yourself” Trap

Most teams are still trying to solve this manually. Despite the explosion of demo tech, 45% of teams don’t use any dedicated software. Another 24% are building home-brewed, in-house solutions.

On some level, it makes sense. 

“It’s our software, shouldn’t we be the ones to build the demo?”

But almost every customer we talk to has regretted their DIY attempts. It’s an enormous resource drain, and they end up wasting years on a problem that has a whole category of vendors to pick from.

The good news? Interactive demo providers were cited as the #1 choice for non-DIYers. More than prototyping software. More than data injection. More than videos and screenshots. SEs are standing up and demanding realism and control.

The Real AI Trend: Builders, Not Presenters

This brings us back to AI. If the trend isn’t AI Avatars, what is it?

The data points to a shift in how AI is applied. The market doesn’t want AI to give the demo. They want AI to build the demo.

The most successful teams in our study are using agentic AI to automate the backend heavy lifting — data injection, environment configuration, and maintenance. They let the AI handle the infrastructure so the human can handle the storytelling.

The Takeaway

2026 isn’t the year the human disappears. It’s the year the human stops doing the robot’s work. We unpacked all of this in the full report.

[Read the State of Demos 2026]