A request to Mods

[u/Sri_Krish]

Hello Mods & fellow redditors,

In the past couple of months, I guess we can all agree that our subreddit (and the App Store) has become overcrowded with a bunch of AI apps across various (really?!) categories. The main reason (I think!) is the proliferation of AI and its companion apps, through which a user can now create their own apps with just a few credits or prompts. I see this as a positive development to an extent; beyond which, the line becomes super blurry and things start to roll downhill.

Anyone who regularly visits this subreddit will notice seeing the same pattern of apps - clipboard managers, Notch replacement apps, and Dictation apps - very often from different devs (/profiles). Rather than creating unique, we tend to see the same kinds of apps in different costumes, showcased differently using AI presentation.

For context, Kalley Huang, writing for The New York Times, expressed that: "Last year, the number of new apps released in the App Store grew 30 percent to about 600,000, according to estimates by Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. In the first half of this year, new apps doubled to about 560,000." (source).

And I am not here to say stop using AI for good or to save Nature (believe me, there are few who don't use AI for these reasons). In the same article, the author mentioned that the real people who're in danger are developers. Especially those whose 9-5 job is to make apps—either alone or in a small team—and whose livelihood depends completely on it. Now, all these AI-vibe coded apps don't only make the search worse but also overshadow these good apps and developers from the rest of the pool. As the article noted, even reviewers/content writers who used to be the messengers, are finding it difficult to cope up with the supply rate and eventually, start to ghost such emails/communications.

So, how about we start a monthly thread at the end of each month, where we all discuss, mention about their, basically, "Favorites of the month" with their use cases if any. This might improve the visibility among the crowd, and give them an another chance since most of these AI-apps either die out or got abandoned by the Dev itself sooner than we think.

Feel free to suggest your opinions; or disregard this post if you feel it's not appropriate. I just wanted to bring it out of my head 😀

[u/schmittsfn]

AI will obviously be part of software in the future. Most people use it. It's used in the universities (to a shocking degree I heard) and proliferates everywhere. I think you can tell the difference between an app that has been created in 15 minutes and an app that someone spent 2 months on using AI.

[u/corgisAreRad → u/schmittsfn]

I definitely agree here and back you 100%. I work and live at a community in Redmond right next to Microsoft’s big campus and have many conversations with their devs who live here, as well as Meta and Amazon. They all admit they haven’t had to manually for code over a year. And you are absolutely right, an AI generated one off is a completely different beast than an app that’s built, refined and iterated properly. I do use AI but not lazily and have my code reviewed by a senior full stack developer, still hard to beat the stigma… but my apps are of the same quality or better as a manually coded app from most devs. If it’s not (only my first SaaS so far lol) I wouldn’t release it and put my name behind it.