A decade ago, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said that “software is eating the world,” The subsequent years proved him correct. Today, it is probably true to say that artificial intelligence is eating software.
The slowing down of Moore’s Law has made AI the number one driver of performance improvements. Mobile app development depends on AI to deliver superior outperformance in a world where improvements in CPU transistors and energy can no longer be relied on.
Whether iOS or Android, the best apps today are artificial intelligence apps.
Top AI Apps For iOS & Android
Virtual assistants are perhaps the most ubiquitous example of artificial intelligence by consumers.
Although Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are all virtual assistants, they have different strengths. For example, although Google Assistant and Alexa are powerful in providing answers to general knowledge questions, with Siri trailing the two, Alexa is superior because it gives more context to its responses.
The video-sharing app, TikTok, has been the most downloaded app of the last two years.
Finally, Twitter, the influential micro-blogging and social networking service, rounds off our list.
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Siri
Siri is a virtual assistant that runs on Apple’s operating systems on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Mac, and Apple TV.
Siri uses voice queries, focus-tracking, gesture-based control, and natural language processing to respond to questions, make recommendations, and perform tasks by assigning specific requests to the relevant internet service. As a result, Siri learns more about users’ searches, preferences, and language patterns and returns more individualized results with increased use.
Siri supports many user commands, such as checking basic facts, scheduling tasks and reminders, performing phone actions, managing device settings, navigating areas, surfing the internet, among other user commands.
Siri’s three most powerful features are:
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Phone and Text actions, such as “Send email to John,” “Call Michael,” and “Read my new messages.”
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Surf the internet, including “Find pictures of …”, “Define …”, and “Search Instagram for …”
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Navigation, including “What’s traffic like on the way the to…?”, “Take me home,” and “Find driving directions to …”
Siri can be described as a butler in your pocket. A hundred years ago, only the very wealthy could afford a butler who would cater to their every need. Today, every Apple user has one inside their Apple product. You can find out more about Siri here.
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TikTok
TikTok is, according to Connie Chen, “the first mainstream consumer app where artificial intelligence IS the product.”
The app hosts short-form user videos of between 15 seconds and three minutes. It is the world’s most downloaded app.
TikTok uses an advanced, cyclic recommendation system to recommend videos for users to watch. It uses user engagement details, personal information, and other details to create a highly personalized “For You” page of videos for you to watch. The algorithm gets better the more you use it, and after just a day of use, it can feel like it is reading your mind.
TikTok’s top features are:
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It allows users to create short-form videos that are typically accompanied by background music, which can be sped up, slowed down, or edited with a filter. Sounds can also be added on top of the background music.
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TikTok’s “For You” page is a powerful demonstration of the brilliance of TikTok’s algorithm. Using your personal information and activity on the app in the form of likes, interactions with, and searches, generates highly personalized content for you to watch.
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TikTok’s “react” feature lets you film your reaction to a video, which will be placed in a small, movable window around the screen.
No social media app comes close to being as good as TikTok is at recommending content for users. The more you use it, the better it gets at giving you addictive, short-form video content. You can try out TikTok here.
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Google Assistant
Google Assistant is a virtual assistant developed by Google and available on mobile and smart home devices. It is available on Android devices as well as iOS. Google Assistant is constantly adding devices it can support. It already supports cars, for example. Users interact with Google Assistant through natural voice or keyboard input. Google Assistant can search the internet, adjust hardware settings on devices, schedule events, and alarms, and show information from the user’s Google account. Google Assistant will also be able to support purchases, send money, identify objects, and get visual information through a device’s camera.
Google Assistant can engage in two-way interactions with users to fulfill various tasks. Its top features are:
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It can act as a connected smart home hub. This will allow you to control various devices, from your Chromecast or TV to the humble light bulb.
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The Scheduled Actions feature allows you to schedule tasks for later. For example, you can say, “Hey Google, start the coffee maker at 6 am”
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The Household Contacts feature allows you to create a speed dial for household contacts without anyone having to look up a number.
Like Siri, Google is a butler in your pocket, but its most effective use is in its ability to create a hub of connected devices that extends across a range of brands and products. You can learn more about Google Assistant here.
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Alexa
Amazon’s Alexa is a virtual assistant used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker, but now has expanded and become rich with functionality. It can conduct voice interaction, playback music, make to-do lists, set alarms, stream podcasts, play audiobooks, and provide weather, traffic, sports, news, and other real-time information. It can control many smart devices using Alexa as a home automation system. Users can extend Alexa’s functionality by installing “skills” developed by third-party vendors. Alexa used natural language processing, automatic speech recognition, and other forms of weak AI to do these jobs.
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Users can interact with Alexa to fulfill a number of preset functions, such as set timers, create lists, share the current weather, and access Wikipedia articles.
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Alexa is the most powerful virtual assistant when it comes to answering general knowledge questions.
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Alexa can be used to stream music from Amazon Music, and it also supports Pandora and Spotify accounts.
Alexa is a potent virtual assistant that competes with Google Assistant and Siri across various functions. However, it has unique strengths, particularly when leveraging Amazon’s products, such as Amazon Prime or even Amazon Web Services. You can learn more about Alexa here.
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Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging and social network service where registered users can “tweet,” reply to, like, and “retweet” posts. Unregistered users are only allowed to read tweets when they are posted. Tweets were initially 140 characters long, but their size was doubled to 280 characters for non-CJK languages. Most tweets are written by a minority of users, with the majority of users preferring to be passive consumers of the content generated on Twitter. Twitter uses artificial intelligence to figure out what tweets to recommend on a user’s timeline, with the goal being to create highly personalized recommendations based on user data.
Twitter’s best features are:
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The Topics feature allows Twitter to curate tweets around topics that you select. Topical tweets are then placed in your timeline.
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The lists function allows users to consume content from specific accounts.
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The Twitter VIT app allows users to manage Q&Q sessions with leads, consumers, and other users.
Twitter is the world’s most powerful microblogging platform and has become the go-to platform for communicating in a text to the world. So you create a Twitter account here and get started.
Summary
Artificial intelligence has become the best tool for driving performance improvements in our time. The most widely used AI apps are virtual assistants, with Amazon, Google, and Apple dominating the landscape. TikTok is the most successful use of AI for creating a consumer app. However, no app is better at engaging users and seeming to read the user’s mind. Twitter is an older version of a recommendation-based, AI-driven app. However, it remains the most crucial platform for interacting with the public.