Is it True can AI Build Apps ?

App development in weeks not months

At Crane.ai, we’ve used Artificial Intelligence to automate software engineering and reduce app development from months to days. As engineers, we are all too familiar with the issues surrounding the mobile app sphere, from evolving specifications to a costly, lengthy engineering process. After spending months studying the developer experience in app development, we designed a workflow integrating key machine learning systems to reduce and automate common processes. We’ve created a new workflow for mobile app development, allowing users to drag and drop screens and see their application created in seconds, from backend databases to frontend views.

Since then, we’ve used our tool to develop several apps in short timeframes. Just last month, we designed a live-streaming mobile app for iOS and Android that was given a 6-month estimate by leading devshops. After 5 hours and a fraction of a percent of the cost quoted, we had it built and ready to deploy at scale to the mobile app market.

During this process, we became familiar with the challenges involved with any AI product. We assembled a large dataset of thousands of screens for our Computer Vision model, allowing us to decompose mobile screens into views and automate User Interface creation. Our tool allows us to then customize each view fully, editing the design in a convenient Sketch-like interface and assembling the workflow of the application. Another AI, a sequence-to-sequence model trained on over 2 billion lines of code, then turns concepts and user flows into mobile application code, finishing months of work instantly. We’ve also developed an interface to automate server and backend creation, as well as database management; with just the press of a button, we can deploy an industry-grade backend complete with redundant databases and a server fleet at scale.

Combining all of these features, we have developed an AI tool to reduce the time and money spent on mobile application development by at least 65%. Artificial Intelligence has completely changed our workflow and approach to software development, and we believe our tool will have an immense impact as to transforming the mobile app industry as a whole.

So what happens next? We think that AI and automation are going to have a profound impact on software development in the future. While Crane has tremendous implications for the mobile application industry, our practices and other new discoveries in artificial intelligence promise a much more efficient, debt-free future. We see AI automating many of the more tedious tasks involved with software development, and perhaps solving technical debt as a whole.

How is AI shaping your company/industry? We’d love to hear about others using AI to accelerate their existing workflows and invent new ways of working!

Hey! I’m Tomer, an entrepreneur and maker. You might know me from Mevee, Crane, and Shots, among other products I’ve launched! This article is a part in a larger series I’m writing mostly based on my experiences, and is largely made of my and my team’s opinions.

I hope this helps you to avoid making the same mistakes I did, and remember to keep shipping!

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