News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday.
Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news.
It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters.
Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.
Yahoo is acquiring Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company announced on Tuesday.
Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, and its proprietary AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app in the coming months.
Although Artifact started off as a simple news app, the end result seemed more like a Twitter replacement.
Artifact’s technology surfaces content users want to see and becomes more attuned to their interests over time.
As a result, users receive a personalized feed of news stories that they want to read.
Artifact, the well-received AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, may not be shutting down as planned.
“It takes a lot less to run it than we had imagined,” Systrom confirmed to TechCrunch, adding that it’s just himself and Krieger running Artifact right now.
Artifact made a splash at launch, not only because it was the first major effort at a new social app from Instagram’s co-founders, but also because of its clever use of AI.
pic.twitter.com/5PaMavJbNS — @samhenrigold@hachyderm.io (@samhenrigold) March 16, 2024Following Artifact’s announcement of its impending closure, interest in using AI to summarize the news has heated up.
Browser startup Arc implemented an AI-powered “pinch to summarize” feature ahead of its $50 million fundraise.
Microsoft’s latest gambit to snag much of the human talent from Inflection AI is causing waves this week.
The subtext is clear enough: Microsoft doesn’t want to run into regulatory oversight in the form of anti-trust action.
Regardless of your perspective on such deal-killing, Microsoft seems to have found a way around the matter in this case.
Elsewhere in Microsoft land there’s talk of a new GPT model from OpenAI, and even some new Surface and Windows news that has an AI lilt.
Wherever you look, there’s Microsoft and AI, cutting up the rug.
On Friday, the startup announced via a blog post it had made the decision to “wind down operations” of the app launched over a year ago, saying that the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment.
It also employed several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines, and surface the best content.
Existing posts will remain visible for the time being, and Artifact will continue to operate its “core news capability” through the end of February.
In part, the way users are finding news and information is changing with the arrival of AI.
The co-founder had spoken about AI’s role at Artifact at this past fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
