Webby Staff Picks: AI & Automation

Astro

Jordana Jarrett / @jordi_cheri
Editorial Coordinator
Favorite App/Service: Astro

“Life would be easier with a personal assistant to keep me on top of my emails and calendar invites. Since I lack both the coins and clout for one, Astro is the next best thing! It’s an awesome email app (featured in Netted) that uses AI to prioritize messages, track emails, and manage calendar invites. It even integrates into Slack. The best part? Astrobot, the chatbot assistant, pings me reminders to call back important clients, helping me crush my professional game. #Winning””

Citymapper

Emily Warren / @emilyhonora
Managing Director
Favorite App/Service: Citymapper

“This is my favorite ‘get me somewhere’ transportation app. It has really accurate subway times and accounts for delays in a hyper-useful way. I like that you can also save your favorite locations and easily shift between modes of transport. It also has my most favorite feature: It tells you the best subway car to be in so that you’ll be close to the right exit at your station stop! #Sick”

Tab

Sebastian Ade / @suhbashchin
Producer
Favorite App/Service: Tab

“I was having a great time at a wonderful restaurant celebrating my buddy’s birthday with seven other friends. Then the bill came. Someone suggested splitting equally, but that would’ve meant that the person who only ordered an appetizer would be pitching in for my full-on steak dinner. And what about covering the birthday boy? In that moment, this app came in handy. Using image recognition technology, it scans bills and allows you to divvy up each item. There’s a birthday function, and Venmo capabilities. No more scrambling over splitting the bill.“

AutoDraw

Starriah McKelvey / @___starbuckss
Animation Intern
Favorite App/Service: AutoDraw

“Sometimes I get so caught up working on projects that I forget to post to my own social media. AutoDraw uses pattern recognition to predict that my poorly finger-drawn cat is actually a really cute doodle of a perfectly round tomato. Then I post it to Snapchat with a witty pun about why I’ve been so MIA. Clearly I have to ketchup with my work.“

Duolingo

Nicole Ferraro / @NicoleFerraro
Editorial Director
Favorite App/Service: Duolingo

“I pathetically lost the Spanish-speaking abilities I learned in school. So I recently started using Duolingo. It’s an awesome app that uses AI-enabled chatbots that act as virtual language tutors. There are a bunch of different ‘tutors’ that engage you on different subjects (I am partial to Chef Roberto, who talks a lot about pizza) and respond differently depending on your answers. And they get more intelligent the more you use them.“

Vivino

Sabrina Dridje
Managing Director
Favorite App/Service: Vivino

“I like wine. I also know very little about it. This app helps me pretend I do at dinner parties. Scanning any label on any bottle, Vivino tells you about the origin of the wine, its average cost, and the more you scan, the more it personalizes its recommendations. Cheers to that!”

Mint

David-Michel Davies / @dmdlikes
CEO
Favorite App/Service: Mint

“Mint is like if Apple made personal finance software but without all the weird dongles. To get started, sign up, hook up all your accounts, and start categorizing charges. The algorithm figures you out pretty quickly—categorizing your Duane Reade charges as entertainment and not medicine (ours had a growler bar)—and then like any good corporate CFO, you have a platform to plan and review your financial life. But here’s the thing—everything that can be is automated! Until the whole country uses this, I’ll say it is underused and undermarketed. A true gem of the digital age.”

Grammarly

Angela Carola / @angcarola
Managing Director
Favorite App/Service: Grammarly

“I have a lot of smart friends—friends who I’d prefer not be exposed to my inability to place a comma. With Grammarly, an AI-powered grammar and spell checking app, I’m able to quickly edit my communications and instantly make it look like I aced that test on semi-colon usage. I opt for the annual subscription but there is a freebie version that spruces up your emails and docs. It goes deep on corrections and allows you to make instant fixes via smart recommendations.”

Cozmo by Anki

Gianfranco Chicco / @gchicco
European Marketing Director
Favorite App/Service: Cozmo by Anki

“Cozmo is a tiny, playful, and smart toy robot by Anki. With a look and feel that’s relatable to Pixar’s Wall-E, it has a bunch of sensors and an artificial brain that makes it aware of the world around it. It can recognise your face and nudge you to play games based on its mood—it does have a chirpy personality! It’s fun to see how it learns about its environment and gets its skills updated over-the-air.”

Digit

Jason Brickhill / @jasonbrickhill
Social Media Manager
Favorite App/Service: Digit

“When it comes to saving money—I just can’t! Whether it’s an Amazon Prime urge late at night or that iced latte I don’t particularly need (but crave), my attempts at saving always failed. Until I met Digit. It analyzes my bank account and saves money here and there without me even thinking about it. Before long, the friendly chatbot will update me on just how much I have in savings!”

Acorns

Emma Whitfield / @emmawhitfield
Account Manager
Favorite App/Service: Acorns

“I’m not a whiz at stocks, but Acorns makes investing easy. You just connect your card, and it rounds your purchases to the nearest dollar and automatically invests your spare change. On top of that, you can also invest a certain amount of money on a monthly basis. Saving and investing for your retirement doesn’t need to be hard!”

Meditate Bot

Claire Graves
Executive Director
Favorite App/Service: Meditate Bot

“I’ve just started using Meditate Bot, which is an AI-powered chatbot that helps you form a daily meditation practice. Not only does it help by scheduling a daily meditation reminder, you can also choose from a growing list of meditations on demand. It also gives you helpful wellness tips every day, including advice on sleeping and eating better.”

Prisma

Steve Marchese / @stevemarchese
Executive Producer
Favorite App/Service: Prisma

“You might remember Prisma when it took over Instagram feeds for a brief moment in 2016. Admittedly, I couldn’t resist its charms. And still can’t. While the award-winning photo editing app is a novel creation, it actually relies on some seriously innovative AI technology: utilizing neural networks to power its amazing photo & video style transfer, and object detection and segmentation. They’ve added some really cool new styles recently, so I recommend you give it a spin and relive the nostalgia.”

Enter The Webbys!

Are you working on a great mobile app, or another awesome Internet project? There’s still time to join the best of the Internet at the 22nd Annual Webby Awards. Enter before the Final Entry Deadline on December 15th!