Webinar Recap: How AI Will Redefine Learning in 2025

In Colossyan’s recent webinar, AI Evangelist Marlon Fuentes hosted a fireside discussion with Robert Guidi, an upskilling engineer who previously led L&D initiatives at PwC and Ford, on how AI will shape the learning industry in 2025.

The conversation covered a range of topics, from the democratization of creativity to the R&D mindset needed to fully understand the value of AI for your organization.

Keep reading for a recap of key highlights from the conversation, or dive into the full recording here: 

The global mandate  

Let’s start with why this topic is important within the global economy and how L&D plays a critical role. 

The recent release of the 2025 World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report shows that we can expect a net increase of 78 million jobs by 2030, with 170 million new jobs created and 92 million roles displaced due to shifts in technology, demographics, and the green transition. 

But with this drastic workforce change comes a skills disruption. By 2030, 39% of workers’ core skills are expected to change, emphasizing the need for continuous reskilling and upskilling initiatives. 

AI plays an undeniable role in these changes, as 80% of those surveyed in the WEF report aim to upskill workers with AI training, while two-thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills. Individual workers themselves are also increasingly understanding the importance of training, with employee training completion rising from 41% in 2023 to 50% in 2024. 

In other words, L&D leaders have a tall order which heavily relies on AI training. 

Use of AI exceeding rate of PC and internet adoption

Since the release of ChatGPT, the demand for generative AI skills has grown dramatically with 39% of the US population using generative AI and 28% bringing it to work, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

You may be thinking, that’s not a big deal. Well, for context, AI adoption is nearly twice as fast as personal computers (PCs) were three years after the IBM PC launched in 1981, and it’s also outpacing early internet adoption. 

While workplace adoption of AI (28% in two years) is similar to that of PCs (25% in three years), its faster overall growth suggests strong adoption at both consumer and professional levels. 

So, what does all of this mean? For L&D professionals, this rapid adoption means that upskilling in generative AI is no longer optional – consumer use is driving mainstream adoption, shaping workplace expectations, and accelerating the need for AI skills.

The opportunity for L&D professionals 

Given the direction the global workforce is headed, L&D teams are in a unique position to be early adopters of AI tools, enabling personalized, interactive, and scalable upskilling programs that better prepare employees for the future.

L&D teams have long sought to expand on-the-job training and personalized coaching, but these initiatives have historically been difficult to scale using traditional methods.

With the growing accessibility of generative AI, knowledge transfer is becoming more seamless and adaptable. AI-powered video platforms like Colossyan make it easy for enterprise leaders to create localized, scenario-based learning experiences that feel more relevant to diverse learners. 

Interactive AI avatars bring storytelling to life, allowing L&D teams to create immersive scenarios that resonate across cultures and learning styles. Interactive document-to-video experiences, complete with knowledge checks and branching scenarios, ensure that learners are actively engaging with content rather than just consuming it.

Rather than replacing human-led training, AI amplifies the impact of learning designers and coaches, enabling them to scale their reach, personalize learning paths, and provide dynamic, cost-effective training experiences. This shift moves eLearning beyond static content, making learning more engaging, contextual, and accessible to a wider audience than ever before.

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Key takeaways on AI in L&D in 2025

Fuentes and Guidi discussed the exploratory mindset needed for organizational AI adoption, the democratization of creativity, and the impact of AI models on the storytelling aspect of L&D. Let’s take a closer look: 

Organizational AI adoption begins with an R&D mindset 

When it comes to implementing AI as an L&D team, there are typically two types of challenges – organizational and tech related. 

L&D teams can navigate organizational barriers to adoption by understanding procurement requirements and engaging vendors strategically. This means identifying fixed needs early, ensuring AI tools align with security, compliance, and integration standards. 

(Pro tip: Here’s a framework to get you started with procurement and vendor engagement!) 

To minimize risk, L&D teams should sandbox AI experiments, running small pilots to test effectiveness and gather feedback before full deployment. Taking a structured, informed approach ensures smoother AI adoption while keeping room for innovation. 

Guidi advises organizations to adopt an R&D mindset when it comes to exploring new AI tools, rather than solely focusing on the return on investment of these tools, at least initially. 

When organizations are overly focused on the ROI of a new tool, it limits the amount of experimentation that a company is open to. Instead, the approach should be to gather information and data to determine whether there is value in AI for your team. 

AI can have a huge impact for organizations, but an overemphasis on delivering specific revenue-related outcomes right from the jump can potentially limit proper exploration. 

In terms of securing initial buy-in on an AI solution early on, Guidi’s advice is to lead with the benefits, convincing employees up your direct channel that these tools provide a massive benefit when attempting to keep up with skills change. 

For instance, LLMs allow you to put the answer to every question inside each employee’s pocket, an especially useful capability in organizations where information may be heavily siloed. Plus, having easily updateable AI video content at the ready can allow for “everboarding” instead of onboarding – ensuring your team is constantly ready to adapt to changes and upskilling initiatives. 

Creativity is very quickly becoming democratized 

AI is significantly lowering the barriers to creativity, allowing anyone to be creative without any technical ability. 

Tools like Midjourney and Colossyan enable anyone to create media assets – even if they don’t typically think of themselves as creative. From an L&D perspective, this means there’s now zero barriers to entry for creating educational content. 

Historically, subject matter experts provide deep expertise on a topic to an instructional designer, who is then responsible for turning that information into learning content. But now, with easy-to-use AI tools, SMEs can actually create the content themselves, freeing up instructional designers to optimize content instead. 

Looking forward, this will allow for a more democratic and collaborative approach to learning within organizations, giving L&D teams more of a role in optimizing content rather than ideating and creating material from scratch. 

AI models are enhancing L&D storytelling 

Storytelling has long been considered one of the most effective ways to relay a message to an audience, as it allows people to connect with content on a more emotional level, and provides context that paves the way for a deeper understanding. 

As Fuentes pointed out during the webinar, generative AI uses the language of theater, storytelling, and cinema to convey information – with many tools, such as Colossyan, relying on scenes, scripts, and characters to deliver content. 

AI gives L&D teams more variables to work with when storytelling – and makes it so that anyone is able to engage in creative storytelling – ultimately improving the impact of L&D content. 

In Guidi’s words, “We create memories when we have feelings, and feelings create sticky tape to stick it to your brain. Stories create that feeling that allows you to adhere those ideas to your consciousness. So sure, we need to use stories in L&D, and that’s the power of the LLM – that’s why it’s such a powerful prospect. The way that it conjures emotion is a really powerful tool.” 

What does this mean for the future of L&D?

When we look at some of the training challenges that today’s L&D teams face, we often hear that creating traditional video-based training content is expensive, time consuming, and often results in poor learner engagement. It’s also extremely difficult to scale traditional video production, and even harder to keep those videos up to date when material changes. 

So, what can we begin doing to overcome these obstacles? 

• Personalization as a standard: AI makes it easier than ever to scale personalized coaching, adapt content on the fly, and localize materials for cultural relevancy.
• Content upcycling: Turning documents like PDFs or PPTs into videos complete with multiple-choice questions and context-aware media has never been faster thanks to AI tools like Colossyan.
• Interactivity: Automatically enriching L&D content by adding choose-your-own-adventure-style branching scenarios and knowledge checks is now possible with AI, boosting audience engagement and information retention.
• Immersive simulations: Place your learners inside of your scenario-based videos by better contextualizing content to your industry. 

The best place to start is with an AI video solution that meets all of these criteria, allowing you to produce high-quality video content faster and at a lower cost. 

Colossyan is the leading AI video solution for workplace learning teams. Book a personalized demo to learn more about Colossyan or try it for free today.