Why I Won't Be Meal Planning Without AI Ever Again

For those that are new around here, this is weekly newsletter where I highlight new and innovative AI products that are worth exploring.

Hey hey!

Happy Friday folks!

In this week’s issue:

• Product of the Week

• Other AI Things Happened

• What I’m Reading

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

After testing dozens of AI products this week. Here’s my report!

The product pick of the week is Toolmark.ai!

I’ve been on a pretty long lasting health kick lately, and I’ve been looking at various ways of getting better at meal planning. I figured this week’s product pick would help me with it.

Toolmark is fresh off the press, very recently launched, and so give it some love where you can!

It gives you the power to build your own personal SaaS tools with simple drag-and-drop interfaces. And, yes, it's as easy as it sounds. This SaaS helps you build light, AI-integrated web tools with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) UI. Honestly, it’s pretty accessible to non-developers! Toolmark.ai really excels in taking the "boring" out of recurring prompts and injecting efficiency into some Gen AI actions that have become part of many routines. 

Okay, let's get into the meat of it.

After I had a friendly chat with my girlfriend on what our requirements would be for the best meal planner ever, I quickly put a few things together in Toolmark. Here it is! We’ve got choices on meals, restrictions, likes, favored cuisines, and more. This is where week’s product pick became apparent as another great example of reusing known technology with enough context enrichment to enhance user experiences.

Shout out to my creators out there: I can also see how Toolmark can be a great testbed for new AI-powered product concepts when looking to run functional software tests in parallel with UI mockups in Figma!

Toolmark.ai is by far in its day-1 state, but it comes with a surprising amount of flexibility. Users can configure the workflow of their “micro-apps” by simply chaining actions and UI conditions to guide the flow of tasks. Although the platform doesn't explicitly outline how to interweave prompt outputs into subsequent steps, I figured out quickly that it did allow users to pass outputs across various components by leveraging the "Result Data Key" feature.

This is built on a web app platform, and its major components are Open AI’s GenAI Tools (GPT 3.5 & GPT4, DALL-E 2 and 3), and Google’s Gemini. I’ve got high hopes that the creators of Toolmark will consider various kinds of integrations and support for more models to be interacted with (probably through REST APIs) as a means to extend the power of this tool significantly. The toolset being handed to me for free went beyond text, and also integrated seamlessly with DALL·E prompts and even Google's Gemini. This openness definitely hints at a future where Toolmark.ai could become a central hub for accessing a larger library of OpenAI models, but only time will tell.

Another cool side note on this one: It effortlessly integrated with APIs, and also with Zapier via webhooks, and it can even manage to send emails. This means that users can automate workflows, streamline processes, and enhance productivity in ways they've only imagined. Although the platform is still in its infancy and features are being added over time, its current capabilities are nothing short of impressive.

TLDR;

All in all, I’m super impressed with what is in front of me for a day 1 SaaS application. Toolmark.ai stands out not only for its user-friendly design but also for its robust integration capabilities. As Toolmark.io continues to evolve and expand its features, there's no telling the heights it will reach to make life easier for us.

Future work I see for the creators

• Shareability of the builds with a team of co-creators will go a long way.

• More of everything!

  • UI components, 

  • AI model compatibility/integrations

  • Having a deeper integration with Zapier to play even nicer with others

OTHER AI THINGS HAPPENED

Some other notable news and product launches from this week

• Cognizant fires up an Advanced AI Lab in San Francisco, armed with a team of AI experts and 75 patents. This thinktank is part of a bold $1 billion generative AI investment, aimed at trying their hand at shaping the future of AI innovation.

• The Swiss Press Council is emphasizing caution among journalists and media outlets when using artificial intelligence (AI) for content creation. They advocate for maintaining journalistic standards of truthfulness, accuracy, and reliability, even with AI-generated content. Furthermore, they recommend that any content created with AI assistance be clearly labeled as such.

• In an interesting turn of events, ex-Meta employees are using LLMs to review LLM outputs! ChatGPT and Claude are taking the heat. Researchers are going at it to identify copyrighted material in AI outputs to try and get a hint of what went into training some of these larger models. Sound familiar? I tested (mind you not with the same rigor) a few weeks back!

• Anthology's AI Design Assistant, a feature of Blackboard Learn Ultra, won the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2023 in the higher education category. Recognized for its innovative approach in aiding instructors with course design through a responsible and trustworthy AI framework, it marks Anthology's fourth accolade since its launch in September 2023. The tool streamlines course building, allowing instructors to focus more on student interaction.

  Raises & Mergers Recap (Pretty quiet this week)

• Zapier, everyone’s favorite accessible automation platform has committed to a greater AI play. They’ve acquired Vowel to bolster their AI capabilities.

• Commercial fleet Management is getting cooler! AON has snagged up Humn.ai's technology assets & IP to bolster their systems, and methods!

• Look our Cybersecurity industry, your player, Zscaler, is making moves. They’ve acquired Avalor, a data aggregation + AI security solution provider in a bid to modernize & advance its technologies.

• Apple has claimed a a Canadian startup, DarwinAI, in a bid to bolter their AI capabilities, IP and staffing.

WHAT I'M WATCHING

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them"

- Albert Einstein

Introducing Devin, an AI Software Engineer? 🤯

I’m still wrapping my head around all of this! its a pretty big development.

Stay well, and until next week.

-✌🏽 Sam

P.S. Interested in private feedback about a product you’re building? Send me an email: [email protected]