A look at Gas, an iOS app that lets teens “gas up each other”; Data.AI: Gas had 500K+ downloads since August launch, despite being limited to a few US states (Ann-Marie Alcántara/Wall Street Journal)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: Lensa tops the US App Store charts with 3.6M installs in December; app saw 12.6M global installs in Dec. so far, up 600% from last 11 days of Nov.  —  Lensa AI’s popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store’s Top Charts.  The popular photo and video editing app recently went viral …

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
PhotoRoom, which is bringing generative AI to its photo editing app for e-commerce vendors and SMBs, raised a $19M Series A; the app has 7M MAUs, 40M+ downloads  —  French startup PhotoRoom has raised a $19 million Series A funding round.  The company develops a popular photo editing app for e-commerce vendors and small businesses.

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple will expand ads to the App Store’s main Today tab and “You Might Also Like” section of individual app listings, starting October 25 globally except China  —  In an email to developers this week, Apple announced that app-related ads will begin appearing in the App Store’s main Today tab …

Bloomberg:
Apple’s unionized Maryland store filed a complaint with the NLRB after Apple withheld medical, educational, and other new benefits given to non-union workers  —  Apple Inc.’s unionized retail store in Maryland is filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after it was excluded …

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Researchers find 75 apps on Google Play and 10 on Apple’s App Store that engaged in ad fraud, collectively had 13M installs, and have since been removed  —  Security researchers have discovered 75 applications on Google Play and another ten on Apple’s App Store engaged in ad fraud.

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple’s new App Store guidelines say that social networking apps that let users buy “boosts” for social media posts must use IAPs for these transactions  —  With the release of iOS 16.1 and iPadOS 16.1, Apple is updating the App Store review guidelines that are provided to developers who create apps for iPhones and iPads.