AI art and photo editing apps have declined in popularity from their peak in mid-December, according to an Apptopia analysis shared with TechCrunch.
Around that time, AI-powered photo apps like Lensa AI captured the attention of the public before they were overshadowed by OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- From late November through mid-December, Lensa AI dominated Apple's App Store charts thanks to a new "magic avatars" tool, which used the Stable Diffusion AI model to create digital-looking artistic avatars from selfies.
- Other apps, such as Dawn AI and FaceApp, offered similar capabilities for creating and editing photos and art using AI.
- At the peak of their popularity in December, these AI photo apps surpassed 4.3 million downloads per day and achieved a collective $1.8 million daily in consumer spending, according to Apptopia.
- That has since dropped to 952,000 combined daily downloads and $434,000 in user spending, the firm said.
- According to TechCrunch, the hype in AI photo apps may have died down over concerns about infringing on artists' copyrights and the ability to generate NSFW images that often targeted women.
- Some people who featured AI-created avatars in their social media profiles were told that they were stealing from artists whose works were used to train the AI systems.
- The market also became over-saturated. After the public tried out the AI photo apps, many people turned their attention to ChatGPT, which came out in late November.
