Software engineers have been increasingly relying on AI to help with complex coding tasks, a practice known as “vibe-coding.”

While vibe-coding has been largely limited to helping with portions of a project, Chinese developers have created an AI tool that converts text into a complete app. 

The app, LingGuang, launched last Tuesday and reached over 1 million downloads in four days. By Monday, the app crossed 2 million downloads, according to the developer – Ant Group (an affiliate of the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group), while LingGuang ranked #1 on Apple’s mainland China App Store for free utilities apps, and #6 overall for free apps. 

Shortly after going viral, the ‘flash program’ feature temporarily crashed amid a flood of users. 

The flash program allows users to create personalized, interactive apps using natural language prompts in 30 seconds. According to Ant Group, people are creating apps like ‘kid activity generators’ and car cost savings calculators. 

“LingGuang is bringing every user their own personal AI developer: someone who can code, create visuals, build programs, and turn complex ideas into simple solutions — right in your pocket,” according to a Tuesday press release from Ant Group CTO He Zhengyu. 

On Monday, the company said that the explosive popularity makes LingGuang “a key player worth following in the quickly evolving global AI race,” noting that the app hit its first million downloads faster than ChatGPT and Sora. 

Beyond the flash programming feature, LingGuang is being advertised as a multimodal AI tool that can generate 3D models, interactive charts, animations and other illustrations in order to help users understand abstract concepts. The tool also includes an “AGI camera” that can understand inputs in real time and help users analyze or edit pictures or videos on the fly. 

h/t Capital.news