Appification in the Age of AI:
Exploring Embeddedness, Visibility, and Dependency

edited by Fernando van der Vlist and Esther Weltevrede

ASI Sprint Report Series No. 3. App Studies Initiative (ASI). doi: 10.17605/osf.io/hv34x.

Abstract

Building directly on the previous work in this series, this report examines the ‘appification of AI’—how AI creeps into our daily lives through various new types of applications and emerging app ecosystems. As the landscape shifts from generative to agentic AI, our central analytical concern is AI’s increasing embeddedness, visibility, and dependency as it transitions into an invisible, foundational infrastructure. Drawing on app studies, platform studies, and critical AI studies, the studies included in this collection investigate this unfolding process across three dimensions: AI-powered applications, everyday uses, and infrastructural integration. Through a series of mappings and five new case studies developed in collaboration with Master’s students, the findings demonstrate AI’s systematic transition into an invisible, infrastructural foundation that redistributes power towards dominant platforms. Specific studies show that first-party AI apps deepen the infrastructural reach of providers through a ‘gradient of absorption’ in mundane task fulfillment; AI mental health apps introduce distinct app logics that reconfigure care; and in domains like food tracking and beauty, there is a consistent gap between developers’ advanced technological narratives and users’ practical, often culturally localised, interpretation of AI. Ultimately, the report highlights the critical significance of app and platform studies for understanding the cultural, economic, and political dimensions of AI as it becomes structurally integrated into the apps and infrastructures of everyday life.

Read more: https://doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/hv34x [PDF] (open access).

About this Report

This third ASI Sprint Report stems from the 2025–2026 Master’s elective course ‘Appification: The Cultures and Economies of Apps’, and the Cultural Data & AI Master’s Embedded Research Project ‘The Appification of AI: Exploring Emerging AI App Ecosystems and Infrastructures’, both developed, taught, and supervised by the editors in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities. It continues the central theme established in Report No. 2: ‘Appification in the Age of AI’. The chapters present the supervised research undertaken by students as part of the Embedded Research Project and the course’s concluding themed ‘data sprint’, organised within the Department of Media Studies. All contributors are listed in the Contributors section of the report.