Artificial intelligence is on the rise in the App Store, and developers are capitalizing on this trend.
Good luck trying to get them to generate hands correctly.
The interest in generative artificial intelligence has grown significantly this year, and application developers have been paying close attention to this trend. AI-focused tools are dominating the popularity charts of Apple's App Store across nearly all categories, especially excelling in education, productivity, and photo editing. This phenomenon is particularly notable in graphic and design applications, where the range of AI content creation tools is overwhelming.
However, quantity does not guarantee quality, and many of these applications turn out to be disappointing. To better understand the current state of AI tools looking ahead to 2025, some of the most popular applications have been tested. For every serious attempt to offer something useful, there are several more that seem more interested in capitalizing on the hype, reserving features under costly subscriptions, presenting misleading results, or simply not functioning properly.
Nearly half of the ten most popular applications in the App Store's graphic and design category contain "AI" in their names, and three of them belong to the same company—HUBX, a Turkish developer founded in 2022. One of their applications, DaVinci AI, is marketed as an AI image generator with photo editing tools. However, almost all of its features are locked behind a $30 annual subscription (or $5 weekly), while the free trial offers only limited access to a text-to-image feature that delivers unsatisfactory results using unspecified versions of models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E.
Despite a simple request such as "a photorealistic dragon flying over a volcano," the results obtained were riddled with errors, such as missing wings and strange perspectives. The generated images are of low quality and poorly cropped. Moreover, the user experience is unfriendly, and if the user decides to pay for the full version, the edited images are downloaded with an unappealing watermark. Nonetheless, this application holds a prominent position in the rankings, surpassing more recognized creative platforms like Microsoft Designer and Adobe Express, which also offer a text-to-image generator.
HUBX also has other products in the market, such as Home AI, which generates interior designs but produces images far from usable, and Tattoo AI, which didn’t even manage to function. These applications share the same payment model and lack details in their App Store update notes. Although they present a surprising number of five-star reviews, user feedback on social media and App Store comments is predominantly negative, with recurring complaints about the difficulty in contacting customer service.
The growing popularity of applications promoting AI features is noteworthy. According to data, four of the ten most downloaded graphic and design applications on iOS in the United States this year have "AI" in their titles. Although this figure is lower than the previous year, the growth of the most popular applications is significant. For example, Photoroom has seen an increase of over 160% in downloads, while Photoshop Express has experienced a 21% decline during the same period.
Not all AI-focused applications are negative, but the market saturation makes it difficult to identify the effective ones. Tools like Google Magic Editor and Adobe Photoshop provide specific functionalities for removing unwanted objects, while smaller developers offering similar features have managed to climb the App Store rankings. Photoroom and Picsart are examples of applications that perform well in this category, providing versatile tools for creating digital content and AI-driven editing features.
In contrast, there is a notable divide between the lists of applications for iPhone and iPad, with very few AI-focused names in the iPad ranking, where more diverse applications like Adobe Fresco and Canva can be found. This suggests that the phenomenon of AI applications is more popular in the mass market and has not fully captured the attention of traditional photographers and illustrators, who still prefer their classic tools. Additionally, it seems that AI holds less appeal if users are expected to pay for it, which aligns with the type of AI creative applications that are common, such as logo generators and interior design services, which often require a fee.
The use of in-app charges to appear in the App Store's free categories is a well-known strategy in the mobile gaming industry, and it is beginning to appear similarly in the creative AI market.
