AI is Booming on the App Store, and Developers are Taking Advantage of it

Generative AI Apps: Separating the Good from the Bad

There’s endless hype around generative AI this year, and app developers have clearly been paying attention. AI-focused tools are blowing up Apple’s App Store charts in almost every category, occupying top 10 rankings across education, productivity, and photo editing. Opportunities are particularly rife for free graphics and design apps, a category that’s positively saturated with AI content creation tools.

The State of AI Tools

But quantity doesn’t mean quality — and a great many of these apps are bewilderingly bad. I’ve been using some of the most popular offerings to understand the state of AI tools as we head into 2025. And for every serious attempt to make AI useful, there seem to be several more designed to cash in on the hype: quietly paywalling features they advertise behind pricey subscriptions and greatly misrepresenting the results that users can achieve, if the app even works at all.

HUBX’s AI Apps

Around half of the App Store’s top 10 graphics and design apps have "AI" in the name, and three of them are all made by the same company — HUBX, an app developer founded in 2022 that’s based in Turkey. One of its apps, DaVinci AI, is advertised as an AI image generator with some photo editing features. Almost every tool is locked behind a $30 annual (or $5 weekly) subscription fee, and the free trial only unlocks a subpar text-to-image feature that gives you a choice between using unspecified versions of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E AI models.

The Results

My prompt was simple — "a photorealistic dragon flying over a volcano" — but the results were full of errors like missing wings and weird perspectives. The images it produces are low-quality and resized or cropped incorrectly. In-app ads appear when you click pretty much any link. The UI is unpleasant to navigate. If you do pay for the full version, you can’t download any edited images without slapping an ugly watermark on it.

Other HUBX Apps

The other two high-ranking HUBX products I tested were just as lackluster: the Home AI "interior design" app spits out hallucination-riddled images of rooms that are barely usable even as concept plans, and the Tattoo AI app refused to work entirely. Both apps have the same feature paywalls and review pop-up reminders as DaVinci AI. The copy and pasted App Store version history notes across all HUBX products are also devoid of any details.

The Verdict

While all three apps feature a surprisingly large number of five-star reviews, the user feedback across social media and the App Store comments is overwhelmingly negative. A recurring complaint is that customer service is impossible to get ahold of. HUBX never responded to my requests for comment.

Conclusion

Apps that clearly advertise having AI features are highly attractive. According to Sensor Tower, four out of the top 10 most downloaded iOS graphics and design apps in the US so far this year have had "AI" somewhere in their title. That’s actually two fewer than last year, but the most popular apps are booming. Photoroom saw downloads increase by more than 160 percent since last year. Comparatively, Photoshop Express downloads on iOS — which also includes generative AI features — fell by 21 percent during the same period.

FAQs

Q: What is the purpose of generative AI apps?
A: Generative AI apps aim to use artificial intelligence to create content, such as images, videos, and music, that can be used for various purposes, including creative projects, marketing, and entertainment.

Q: Are all generative AI apps created equal?
A: No, not all generative AI apps are created equal. Some apps may be more effective and user-friendly than others, while some may be more focused on specific tasks or industries.

Q: What are some examples of good generative AI apps?
A: Some examples of good generative AI apps include Google’s Magic Editor, Adobe Photoshop, and Picsart AI, which provide specific tools for removing unwanted objects from photos or inserting new ones in specific places.

Q: What are some red flags to watch out for when using generative AI apps?
A: Some red flags to watch out for when using generative AI apps include apps that promise unrealistic results, apps that require you to pay for features that are not clearly advertised, and apps that have poor user reviews and feedback.