{"id":8966,"date":"2023-03-18T17:16:18","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T17:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/18\/this-week-in-apps-ai-powered-productivity-apps-us-weighs-tiktok-ban-svb-crash-boosts-crypto-apps\/"},"modified":"2023-03-18T17:16:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T17:16:18","slug":"this-week-in-apps-ai-powered-productivity-apps-us-weighs-tiktok-ban-svb-crash-boosts-crypto-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/18\/this-week-in-apps-ai-powered-productivity-apps-us-weighs-tiktok-ban-svb-crash-boosts-crypto-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Apps: AI-powered productivity apps, US weighs TikTok ban, SVB crash boosts crypto apps"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series<\/a> that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.<\/p>\n

The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion<\/a>, according to data.ai\u2019s \u201cState of Mobile\u201d report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year over year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.<\/p>\n

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.<\/p>\n

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Top Stories<\/h2>\n

Our Everyday Apps Get AI<\/h3>\n

While the announcement wasn\u2019t necessarily targeted toward mobile, the sweeping AI-fueled changes that are coming to the biggest productivity apps from Microsoft and Google<\/strong> will have a wider impact on the productivity app industry. That is, they\u2019re now raising the stakes for what a productivity app should be able to do<\/strong>. It will no longer be enough to simply offer an elegant, refined, and efficient note-taking tool, docs editor, spreadsheet, slideshow maker, and so on \u2014 the apps will also need to have baked-in AI smarts.<\/p>\n

This week, in case you missed it, both Microsoft<\/a> and Google<\/a> announced the new generation of their productivity software products.<\/strong> Microsoft, which calls its digital helper a \u201cCopilot<\/strong>,\u201d is bringing AI to everyday tools like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and more.<\/strong> It\u2019s integrating a new Business Chat feature<\/strong> that understands what a knowledge worker has in their inbox, calendar, chats, and across their files, and can be prompted to do things like create a status report on a project that\u2019s then shared to the team. It\u2019s even leveraging AI to help workers build their own line-of-business apps<\/a> using natural language prompts.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn expanded its generative AI assistant<\/a> to recruitment ads and writing profiles<\/strong>. The company\u2019s AI-powered writing suggestions are built on advanced GPT models, including GPT-4 (profiles) and GPT-3.5 (job descriptions).<\/p>\n

Google, meanwhile, said it would bring AI tools to Workspace, its productivity suite that includes Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, Slides, and Chat.<\/strong> Though the company hasn\u2019t fully shared its vision for Chat \u2014 saying only that it will \u201cenable workflows for getting things done\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s likely aiming to keep up with Microsoft\u2019s plans. In addition, Google is leveraging generative AI to create auto-generated images, audio, and video in Slides<\/strong>, which is an interesting angle on modern productivity \u2014 and, potentially, a threat to the one-off tools built to address each individual generative AI use case.<\/p>\n

These enhancements to users\u2019 everyday apps, from emails to docs to spreadsheets and more, will help to bring AI to mainstream users<\/strong> in a way that a ChatGPT-powered Bing alone cannot. The new tech is now just baked in, under the hood, offering additional functionality to the end user. It may eventually even reduce the working hours required to complete various tasks, as productivity users lean more on AI to write and edit for them, create presentations, take meeting notes, manage inboxes, and more.<\/p>\n

But to what end? Will workers now be expected to fill their newly freed hours with ever more work or will technology finally fulfill its original promise of allowing us to lead more comfortable lives? Do we still need to work 40 hours a week when AI can work for us?<\/p>\n

TikTok\u2019s fate up in the air in U.S.<\/h3>\n

Will they or won\u2019t they\u2026ban<\/a> TikTok? That\u2019s the question<\/a> sure to be on the minds of ByteDance execs as they weigh their decision to either spin off the U.S. operations of the TikTok app or risk being fully banned in the U.S.<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0The anti-TikTok sentiment in Congress has rare bipartisan support at a time when the two sides can\u2019t seem to agree on anything, which makes the potential for a ban look more likely. It\u2019s not helping ByteDance\u2019s case that the FBI and DOJ are investigating<\/a> ByteDance\u2019s use of TikTok to spy on journalists, either.<\/p>\n

Other Western markets are also taking steps to limit TikTok\u2019s threat, not just the U.S.<\/a> This week, New Zealand banned TikTok from government devices<\/a> days after the U.K. did the same<\/a>.<\/strong> The moves follow lawmakers\u2019 banning of the app in Canada and Belgium<\/a>\u00a0and in the E.U.<\/a><\/p>\n

TikTok, for the time being, is hoping to assure lawmakers of its safety, even offering an audit by U.S. tech giant Oracle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But while a full ban may put an end to lawmakers\u2019 immediate concerns about the potential for CCP surveillance of U.S. citizens or the potential to manipulate the populace with pro-China propaganda, the real concern here is lawmakers\u2019 inability to pass regulations over U.S. user data privacy for all our apps,<\/strong> not just those from China.<\/p>\n

Expect next week\u2019s Congressional hearing<\/a> with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to be an interesting one to watch!<\/p>\n

SVB meltdown hits app makers, boosts crypto apps<\/h3>\n

Silicon Valley Bank\u2019s failure was the biggest story<\/a> of this week<\/strong>, as numerous tech companies, large and small, and their investors had funds tied up in the bank, which is now under regulator control<\/a> and whose parent company is officially filing for bankruptcy<\/a>. Among the public companies with exposure to SVB were big names like Roku, Roblox<\/a>, Quotient, Vimeo, Rocket Lab, SoFi, Life360, Sezzle, Unity, AppLovin, Wish<\/a>, and many others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While there were several factors that played into the eventual bank run, from bad bets<\/a> to bad decisions<\/a>, the ability to stoke fear and panic on Twitter played a notable role,<\/strong> with some investors tweeting in ALL CAPS<\/a> that people should be ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED RIGHT NOW.<\/p>\n

U.S. lawmakers have since taken notice of how bad actors<\/a> on Twitter factored into the bank\u2019s collapse<\/strong>, even going so far as to blame VCs and others for using social media apps and online chats to coordinate their SVB withdrawals, effectively ensuring the bank\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been supportive of the venture capital community \u2014 I was a venture capitalist before \u2014 but I think there were some bad actors in the VC community who literally started to spur this run by virtually crying fire in a crowded theater in terms of rushing all these deposits out,\u201d said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) in a report by The Hill.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how strong capital and liquidity supervision are, if a bank has an overwhelming run that\u2019s spurred by social media or whatever so that it\u2019s seeing deposits flee at that pace, the bank can be put in danger of failing,\u201d Treasury secretary Janet Yellen also said.<\/p>\n

Whether the bank\u2019s failure \u2014 and the subsequent failures of crypto-friendly banks Signature<\/a> and\u00a0Silvergate<\/a> \u2014 will lead to new, retightened regulations remains to be seen<\/a>, but one category of apps did benefit from the chaos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the seeming contagion to crypto banks, Apptopia reported the top crypto apps\u2019 downloads rose over 15%<\/a> following SVB\u2019s collapse.<\/strong> At the same time, the top 10 traditional banks and top 10 \u201cdigital first\u201d bank app downloads fell by about 5% and 3%, respectively. This begs the question of whether the people shouting FIRE!<\/em> last weekend<\/a> were also those who were heavily invested in crypto and therefore would have benefited from negative public sentiment<\/a> toward traditional banking.<\/p>\n

Though the fed is making SVB\u2019s depositors whole<\/a>, the crisis also exposed the reach of SVB\u2019s tendrils beyond the Valley and the potential for a banking collapse to disproportionately impact some groups<\/strong> over others. The effects were felt as wide as the African startup ecosystem<\/a>\u00a0and highlighted the inequities in the broader tech industry<\/a>.<\/strong> On one side, you have startups whose founders could self-fund their companies<\/a><\/strong> while waiting on a resolution, and on the other, there were serious concerns over missing payroll and business stoppage.<\/p>\n

Many suspect we\u2019ll see continuing fallout from SVB in terms of raising venture debt<\/a><\/strong>, something SVB was known for. Whether it opens up the floor to new entrants or drives up the cost of venture debt is being debated, but we\u2019re sure to feel the impacts of this failure for months to come.<\/p>\n

Platforms<\/h2>\n

Apple<\/h3>\n