🧙🏼 Top 100 GenAI products (updated)

Howdy, wizards.

Ad spots in this newsletter have been filled some time, but I still got a few slots available for September and October… for the remaining slots I’ve lowered the prices by 30% on both main and secondary ads. Showcase your product to 12,000 AI power users by reserving your slot ASAP.

Here’s What’s brewing in AI today:

Dario’s Picks

The most important news stories in AI this week

1. New ranking on the top 100 GenAI products from a16z. Beyond hyped-up products and investments, which AI products are people actually using? Venture capital firm a16z just published the 3rd version of their half-yearly report with rankings of the top 50 GenAI consumer apps on desktop and mobile, respectively.

Key trends:

• ChatGPT remains by far the most popular product and general assistant, but getting increased competition from Perplexity and Claude.

• Early traffic on Discord is a leading indicator for products that will succeed as a web and mobile app. The prime example here is music generator Suno, which has migrated off Discord and into a web app, and saw the fastest growth in the last 6 months, jumping from #36 to #5.

• Most tools on the list are creative tools for content generation and editing; most new entrants are in this category too: Luma AI, Viggle, Vidnoz (all video products) and Udio (music).

• TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, have launched an R&D division in late 2023 and has three new entrants on the list: Gauth (edtech), Coze (bot builder), and Doubao (Chinese general assistant).

• Aesthetics and dating is broken out as a new product category and includes: Umax and Looksmax (rates your dating app photo and bio) and Rizz (helps you come up with witty lines and replies based on screenshots from your dating app conversations).

‎

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ With the news overflowing with new AI products and startups, many of which aren’t that innovative or useful, a neat view like this on what’s actually gaining traction with people is sobering and highly useful. Hats off to Olivia Moore and the a16z team for this amazing overview and analysis of the market.‎

Continued after the ad… ‎

This issue is brought to you by

Everyday investors net +$60M in proceeds from the sale of exclusive assets

From CEOs to shop owners, investors in Masterworks’ art offerings have received more than +$60,000,000 in total net proceeds to date (including principal) across their 23 exits.*

Surprised that so many people are interested in art investing? Bank of America recently found 83% of wealthy American investors 43 and under already collect, or want to. Normally, only the top 1% of investors would be able to diversify with art like Picassos and Banksys. But with Masterworks, you can easily diversify into this asset class without needing millions, or art expertise.

With a team that’s been working since 2019, Masterworks investors have realized representative annualized net returns like +17.6%, +17.8%, and +21.5% among assets held for longer than one year.

Readers can even skip the waitlist here.

2. Midjourney opens their web platform to everyone. Midjourney is now open for anyone to use on the web, including temporary free trials. The interface is much simpler than what they have on Discord. You previously had to generate 1,000+ images before being allowed to use the web version.

    

   Here’s a 2-minute tutorial on how to use it.

    

   

    

   ‎‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Midjourney is one of the most popular image generators, but a lot of folks haven’t tried it as the user interface on Discord was a bit clunky, and you also needed to pay. With a user-friendly web interface AND free trial, I expect a lot more users coming Midjourney’s way.

From our partners

“I’ll just do it myself.” Sound familiar?

If that’s your response as you stare at your endless to-do list, remember this: If you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant. You need to delegate those tasks to a US-based BELAY Virtual Assistant – and here are 25 things they could start to own for you on day one. In as little as one week, you can be intentionally matched with a BELAY Virtual Assistant, so you can get back to what only you can do: Growing your organization.

Learn more here.

3. Google just increased Gemini's max PDF upload size to 1,000 pages or 2GB (up from 300 pages previously). It processes both text and images in the uploaded docs.

   ‎

   ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Think about this in the context of things you can use Gemini's long context window for at work (and the article on this I linked to yesterday). This only makes such ways of using Gemini even more relevant and useful. Time to get automating!

    

4. ¹Want a byte-sized version of Hacker News? Try TLDR’s free daily newsletter.

¹Sponsored

Affiliate disclosure: To cover the cost of my email software and the time I spend writing this newsletter, I sometimes link to products and other newsletters. Please assume these are affiliate links. If you choose to subscribe to a newsletter or buy a product through any of my links then THANK YOU – it will make it possible for me to continue to do this.

*Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Investment involves risk. See Important Reg A Disclosures at masterworks.com/cd.

The content is not intended to provide legal, tax, or investment advice.

No money is being solicited or will be accepted until the offering statement for a particular offering has been qualified by the SEC. Offers may be revoked at any time. Contacting Masterworks involves no commitment or obligation.

“Net Annualized Return” refers to the annualized internal rate of return net of all fees and expenses, calculated from the offering closing date to the date the sale is consummated. IRR may not be indicative of Masterworks paintings not yet sold and past performance is not indicative of future results. For additional information regarding the calculation of IRR for a particular investment in an artwork that has been sold, a reconciliation will be filed as an exhibit to Form 1-U and will be available on the SEC’s website. Masterworks has realized illustrative annualized net returns of 17.6% (1067 days held), 17.8% (672 days held), and 21.5% (638 days held) on 13 works held longer than one year (not inclusive of works held less than one year and unsold works).

*“Net proceeds” represents the total liquidation proceeds distributed back to investors, net of all fees, expenses and proceeds reinvested in Masterworks offerings, of all works Masterworks has exited to date. This metric is not considered a presentation of performance but rather a mathematical figure that displays a platform metric on size, scale, and operation of the platform.