News app Artifact can now summarize stories using AI, including in fun styles

Artifact, the personalized news aggregator from Instagram’s founders is further embracing AI with the launch of a new feature that will now summarize news articles for you. The company announced today it’s introducing a tool that generates article summaries with a tap of a button, in order to give readers the ability to understand the “high-level points” of an article before they read. For a little extra fun, the feature can also be used to summarize news in a certain style — like “explain like I’m five,” in the style of Gen Z speech, or using only emojis, for example.

These styles aren’t really meant to be useful, they’re just there to add a little whimsy to the feature and potentially encourage users to try the new feature.

To use the AI summaries feature, you’ll tap on the “Aa” button found on the menu above an individual news article, then tap the new “Summarize” option. The company confirmed it’s leveraging OpenAI’s technologies via its API to generate text summaries.

However, the company cautions users the feature should not replace actually reading the news, as AI isn’t perfect.

“It’s important to note that summaries don’t replace the utility of having the full text of the article,” the company blog post reads. “AI is powerful, but from time to time can make mistakes, so it’s important to verify the summary matches the article as you read the full text,” it warns.

The company said it may add other fun styles for users to play with over time, in addition to those available at launch.

The feature is just now rolling out to Artifact users, so you may not immediately see the Summarize option in your app, but should soon.

Founded by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Artifact’s original premise has been to offer a personalized experience around news reading, but not one that leaves users trapped in “filter bubbles” as they were on Facebook. Though Artifact’s home screen does present a curated selection of news tailored to the end user, based on their reading preferences and engagement, the headlines section of the app shows users the same news item as covered by a variety of sources across the wider news ecosystem. Artifact vets its news sources upfront for adhering to certain standards around integrity — like their fact-checking and corrections process, their transparency around funding, and more.

Since its public launch in February, Artifact has been quickly iterating on its feature set, and earlier this month rolled out a social discussions feature that lets users comment on news items as well as upvote and downvote comments left by others.

The company isn’t yet sharing how many people are now actively using its news app, but app intelligence firm data.ai reports the app has seen 240,000 worldwide across both app stores to date. On the U.S. App Store, the app is currently ranked No. 115 in the News section.

News app Artifact can now summarize stories using AI, including in fun styles by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch