Building a great user experience (UX) is make-or-break for apps these days. With over 5 million apps out there on the Apple and Google Play stores, standing out from the crowd is tougher than ever. So how can developers create UX that wows and delights users? Artificial intelligence (AI) holds a lot of promise and potential. By baking smart AI capabilities into apps, developers can take the user experience to the next level.

Now I know AI might sound super techy and complex, but stay with me. At a human level, AI can make apps more personalized, predictive, helpful and just straightforward easier to use. It’s all about creating experiences that feel like the app truly understands you and knows what you need. Here are some of the key ways AI can humanize and enhance apps.

Personalization – Your Own Personal Shopper

One of the biggest perks of AI is its ability to tailor experiences to each user. For instance, by observing your habits over time, an app can learn your preferences and interests. It can then automatically customize itself just for you. 

Let’s say you listen to podcasts every morning while getting ready for work. Your app may notice this routine and start recommending new podcast episodes to you in the mornings that match your tastes. Or if you do your clothes shopping late at night as a guilty pleasure, your favorite shopping app may highlight deals and new arrivals in the evening to fuel your habit!

AI takes personalization even further by detecting emotions. Yep, apps can now tell how you’re feeling through cameras and microphones on your phone to analyze facial expressions and tone of voice. A smart music app may pick motivating, upbeat songs when it senses you’re bored. Airlines are even testing using emotion detection to identify stressed travelers and offer help. Kinda cool right? The possibilities to make apps relatable and human-like through AI are endless.

Predictive Powers – Your Own Psychic 

Here’s another superhuman ability AI can give apps – predicting the future, or at least what you’re likely to do next! By spotting patterns in your habits over time, an app can anticipate what you’ll probably want to do, and take actions on your behalf. 

A great example of this is Google Maps, which uses AI to study your commuting patterns. After a while it may automatically display commute times to work every Monday morning and give alerts about your upcoming appointments. Pretty psychic huh? Food delivery apps also harness predictive AI to recommend restaurants and menu items to you based on your previous orders. The more your app gets to know you through AI, the better it can predict what you want.

Talking to Apps – No Typing Needed

Thanks to advances in voice recognition, you can now chat with your apps instead of always having to type and tap. Just like Siri or Alexa, app developers are adding voice capabilities so you can interact hands-free. You can dictate messages in chat apps, add tasks with your voice in to-do lists, search for products in shopping apps, and much more. 

AI helps these apps understand natural language, so you can just talk conversationally. And it keeps getting smarter the more it hears people talk. Voice makes using apps feel frictionless and fun. It gives you superhuman powers, without having to actually be a superhuman!

Seeing the World – Through Your App’s Eyes 

Here’s another AI superpower that’s especially cool – the ability for apps to visually see and understand the world around you! This area of AI is called computer vision and it powers some really advanced photo, video and augmented reality capabilities.

For example, photo editing apps leverage computer vision to detect faces, backgrounds and objects within images. This lets you easily cut people out of pics and paste them into new backgrounds. Computer vision AI also enables social media and shopping apps to automatically tag people and products in images, so you don’t have to. Pretty handy! And computer vision makes virtual try-on possible, so you can see if clothes, makeup or glasses will look good before you buy. As this tech improves, it will unlock all kinds of visually engaging experiences.

Your Own Personal Assistant

Another popular use of AI is powering intelligent chatbots that can converse with you to provide helpful information, recommendations and support. Retail apps use chatbots to give you personalized product suggestions. Financial apps let you check your balances and transfer funds by chatting. And travel apps enable researching, booking and modifying trips through natural conversation.

Advanced AI helps these chatbots understand context and talk more naturally with personality. And they keep getting smarter the more people they chat with! Intelligent assistants enhance enjoyment and make apps more useful.

Adaptive Apps – Shapeshifters 

Here’s an intriguing idea – what if your apps could automatically reshape themselves to match your needs in the moment? That’s the promise of adaptive interfaces. By studying you and your environment, your app may change its layout and options to fit your context.

For example, it may highlight certain features you use frequently or reorganize menus based on usage patterns. An adaptive UI could also tweak itself based on light conditions, noise levels or if you’re walking vs. stationary. The goal is to provide you the right interface customized to your circumstances. Adaptive apps aim to give you superhuman flexibility!

Automating the Tedious Stuff

One of the most practical uses of AI is taking tedious tasks off your plate. Apps can incorporate AI to extract data from documents, file things automatically into folders, and complete repetitive administrative work on your behalf. 

For instance, expense reporting apps like Expensify use AI to pull key details from photos of receipts so you don’t have to painstakingly type it all in manually. PDF management apps can deploy AI to categorize documents based on their contents. Little efficiencies like this really add up! AI gives you the superpower to skip the boring stuff.

Building Smarter Apps Behind the Scenes 

Beyond what users interact with directly, AI can also be applied behind the scenes to improve overall app quality during development.

AI techniques can detect potential bugs in code early on so developers can fix them faster. Testing tools use AI to simulate human usage of apps to catch usability issues. And AI analytics help developers understand problems and continuously refine the UX.

So while you may not see these efforts directly, they contribute to more intelligent, superpowered apps overall!

Challenges to Tackle

Alright, while AI holds a ton of potential, it does come with some challenges:

– Getting users onboard – For AI to be useful, people need to understand it, trust it and widely adopt it. This takes thoughtful communication.

– Maturity of technology – Some AI capabilities are still evolving which makes integration tricky at times. Assessing tools is key.

– Privacy concerns – AI relies heavily on user data which raises privacy worries. Being transparent about data practices is crucial.

– Costs to develop – Building quality AI requires data scientists, ML engineers and training data which ain’t cheap! But the UX payoff can make the investment worthwhile. 

– Maintenance needs – Like any complex system, AI models need ongoing monitoring, retraining and care.

Tips for Creating Superpowered Experiences 

If you’re keen to tap into AI’s magic to wow users, here are a few tips:

– Show tangible value – Clearly highlight how AI features will benefit users through demos and tutorials.

– Promote transparency – Explain how the AI works and why to build trust. Allow options to disable it.

– Start small – Pick a few key use cases vs. entire experiences to integrate AI initially.

– Design inclusively – Ensure AI works well for diverse users and avoids biases. 

– Prioritize privacy – Give users transparency into data practices and control over data collection.

– Monitor closely – Continuously evaluate AI quality and user reception. Be ready to quickly improve. 

– Plan for maintenance – Architect AI solutions to make updates and retraining as easy as possible.

The Superpowered Future Awaits

AI has huge potential to take mobile apps to the next level – making them more personalized, predictive, conversational and downright magical. We’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible as the tech progresses. Apps of the future may feel like your own customizable personal assistant!

But it’s not just up to the tech giants alone. As app developers, we have an important role to play in shaping how AI gets used responsibly. By putting everyday users at the center, app experiences enhanced by AI can truly soar to new heights. Are you ready? Your superpowered future awaits…