BB Digest: Make apps with Replit Agent

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Hey folks, I’m back from vacation, and so are our expert workshops!

We have three workshops back-to-back this week:

• Today [11 AM EST] - Using AI to build and deploy a digital marketing strategy with Will Francis.

• Tomorrow [9 AM EST] - How Dan Shipper uses AI as a creative tool.

• Thursday [9 AM EST] - Learn to code using AI with Sahil Lavingia. (open to free members too 🎉)

Let’s go…

TLDR; inside today’s newsletter

• Replit Agent and AI in iPhone 16 turn heads, TIME makes AI folks mad again.

• ICYMI: 5 new tutorials and a blog post.

• snack n skill - a bite-sized lesson for finding action items from emails.

• 8 of the best new AI tools

• 7 interesting posts from around the web

• to-do’s

Alright, let’s get to it!

 🔎 Trends & news

• Replit introduced its AI agent, which creates apps for you. Perfect for non-coders like me, who were still left behind because I don’t know what to do with AI-generated code. Replit Agent uses the tools that it already has to help you make the app live. I made one yesterday (and a few more since)

• Apple announced new iPhones with Apple Intelligence rollout starting next month. The iPhone 16 series is coming with updated Siri, semantic understanding of all your data and visual intelligence (summary below).

• OpenAI says 1M people use ChatGPT business now. OpenAI is also considering more ChatGPT plans at higher price points (ranging from $200 to $2k) Employers: get your employees a team subscription, because they are already using AI, with self-paid accounts.

• TIME magazine released its annual AI 100 list - A list of the most impactful people in AI. As always, it attracted criticism for not including people in the thick of the AI development.

• Join CrewAI, LlamaIndex, OctoAI, The GenAI Collective, and more on September 17th to explore the cutting-edge use of agentic AI in high-value, high-scale use cases. Learn from engineers actively building autonomous AI systems that drive productivity. Register to join live or to get the recording.
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👀 ICYMI: New stuff we’ve launched

• Reactivate inactive customers & send them personalized emails using Claude and Zapier.

• Extract tasks from your emails and add them to a Notion database automatically.

• Use Replit’s AI to explain code repositories from GitHub and improve your coding skills.

• Use AI to label incoming urgent emails with Zapier and ChatGPT.

• Build an AI-powered automation to analyze competitor prices and update your pricing strategy.

• How to streamline operations with AI - Manage priorities, develop SOPs and increase workflow efficiency.

🍽️ Snack ‘n’ skill

Learn how to find action items from emails

As your inbox fills up, important tasks can easily get buried in long email threads. Manually combing through messages to create to-do lists eats up valuable time.

What if AI could scan your emails and compile a list of action items for you?

Step 1. Setting up necessary tools

In this tutorial, we'll create a workflow that uses Gumloop AI to analyze your incoming emails, identify action items, and add them to a Notion database.

Get started by creating a Notion database to store extracted action items.

Step 2. Key steps in building your automated workflow

Then,

• Go to Gumloop and create a new workflow with a blank canvas. Add the “Gmail reader” node to get your emails.

• Add an “Ask AI” node with your prompt to extract action items using AI.

• Connect the workflow to your Notion database to automatically add new tasks.

• Set up automated triggering to process new emails as they arrive.

Tip: We had Gumloop’s founder for a workshop, you can check out the recording for more ways to use AI and automation.

This walkthrough is a condensed version of this tutorial. Check it out for one-click copyable prompts and more detailed steps.

⚙️ Top new tools

• Assembly AI* - Quickly build AI products with voice data.

• CogCache* - Save up to 50% on your inference with the most cost-effective, high-performance way to access the latest frontier models.

• Outerbase - Navigating complex data made as easy as spreadsheets.

• Competitor Analysis by Branding 5 - Understand your competitor's digital strategies and market positioning.

• Sprig - Ask AI for actionable product insights.

• VideoGen - Create and edit videos in seconds. (works for text-based videos, not with people in it).

• Trupeer - Turn simple screen recordings into polished product videos and detailed guides.

• Shortwave AI Assistant - Email partner with multi-step reasoning, smart search and deep integrations.

• Google has begun early rollout for Ask Photos, i.e. Q&A over your photos for US users.

More tools here →
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 📜 Interesting posts

• 🌟 A deep dive on prompt engineering from Anthropic staff.

• How Indeed is using AI to match job seekers with perfect opportunities.

• Dan makes the case for why generalists own the future.

• How LinkedIn is using AI for product development.

• Transforming code, care & classrooms with AI.

• Talking with Andrej Karpathy about the near and far future of AI.

• Mux tried to add AI to its docs, it didn’t work out great but they have stuff to share on what works and what doesn’t.

🗣️ Everyone’s talking about

Apple's rolling out its Apple Intelligence features with the iPhone 16 lineup, promising a smarter, more capable smartphone experience.

What's going on here?

Apple will start the rollout of Apple Intelligence next month.

What does this mean?

AI-based Writing Tools are baked in everywhere. They’ll help you refine text across apps with rewriting and summarizing. All your emails and notifications will automatically summarise the most helpful information.

The Photos app gains AI-powered movie creation and a "Clean Up" tool for removing distractions. In the coming months, you will also be able to search across your photos and videos in natural language.

Siri gets a makeover with a glowing light design and improved language understanding. It also integrates deeper with Google and ChatGPT. A new visual intelligence feature allows you to use your camera to search info on your surroundings.

Why should you care?

If you've got an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, you're about to get a big AI upgrade. Think smarter photo editing, more useful Siri, and AI-powered productivity tools right in your pocket. Plus, with Apple's privacy-first approach, you get cutting-edge AI without compromising your data. It's Apple's answer to the AI arms race, and it's coming to your iPhone soon.

Read more stories on the Ben’s Bites blog.

📌 To-dos

1. However you automate, there’s a session for you at ZapConnect. Save your spot now* for Zapier’s virtual user conference.

2. Register for our upcoming expert workshops. There’s one happening today too.
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That wraps things up for today! See you again on Thursday. 👋

Ben