AI chat apps like ChatGPT and Google Bard may be the hottest thing in tech at the moment, but new data suggests that once-hot AI photo apps like Lensa have had their day.
Analytics company Apptopia looked at the download trends for Lensa AI and other leading AI photo apps, and found that after a very strong peak in mid-December, numbers have fallen to the initial levels seen in the summer of last year. Three factors are likely to have been at play …
Apptopia shared its findings with TechCrunch.
Apptopia examined the leading AI photo app Lensa AI and others, including Voi, Remini, Pixelup, Fotor, Wonder, FacePlay, Aiby, FaceApp, Gradient, Dawn AI, Facetune, Prequel, Voilà AI Artist, New Profile Pic Avatar Maker, and Meitu. (Voi was a later arrival, launching on December 7.)
Apptopia found that this group of AI apps first began to take off around Thanksgiving, then hit their peak in terms of both downloads and in-app purchases around mid-December. At their height of popularity, the apps topped 4.3 million daily downloads and ~$1.8 million per day in consumer spending via in-app purchases.
Those numbers have significantly dropped since. On November 11, the apps saw their lowest revenue, at $0.37 million. And, a week later on November 19, they saw the lowest number of downloads, at 0.84 million.
As of yesterday (not shown on the chart below), the same group of apps saw only around 952,000 combined downloads and around $507,000 in consumer spending, as the numbers continue to fall.
Apptopia’s Adam Blacker described it as “another fad comes and goes.”
TechCrunch‘s Sarah Perez suggests that the novelty factor quickly wore off, compounded by perceptions that the apps were ripping off the work of popular artists by effectively stealing their styles. When photos processed by AI apps might attract negative comments on social media for that reason, far fewer people wanted to post them. The apparent sexism of AI photo apps also didn’t help.
Meantime, ChatGPT and its ilk continue to gather headlines, but increasingly for the wrong reasons. Many recent stories are focusing on the embarrassing errors made by these bots. I observed last week that chat AI tech is much dumber than it appears, and opined about why Apple is unlikely to turn Siri into an LLM any time soon.
Image examples: Melissa Heikkilä/MIT Technology Review
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments