> That's just volume though

If we sorted through all those new apps and ignored all the crap, I'm pretty sure we would find an overall increase in actually useful apps. I just shipped a new app myself, and I think it's useful, and I wouldn't have finished mine without AI assistance.

> products with a real userbase that couldn't exist or be scaled pre-AI?

Coding hasn't been the bottleneck for product creation for a while. So I don't think there are going to be many examples that fit that exact criteria. Any app idea was 'possible' before, it just took more developer hours to do it. So now teams are doing more things that were weren't worth the effort before, but are a lot more feasible with AI assistance.

> I'm pretty sure we would find an overall increase in actually useful apps

I think you're probably right but at what point does it become diminishing returns? I have observed the app market to be overly saturated for years and rarely download something other than a mobile-banking update.

What you're saying wouldn't be hard to prove, you're acting as if we aren't aware of usage statistics. We can even tell if MAU (monthly active users) are increasing or not for particular apps. So we are aware of them and what do they actually say?