A new AI-powered news feed is now available on iOS and Android. Is about artifactthe app from the co-founders of Instagram that promises to take advantage of machine learning to display content related to your tastes or reading habits.
What the app developers have proposed is create a kind of TikTok, but for the consumption of articles or news. This means that the feed of the app is renewed with reading options according to how the algorithm understands the interests of each user.
Although the Artifact developers claim that the news manager is still in development, It is already possible to install it on an iPhone or Android mobiles. The publicly available version has several more features than the one that was in closed beta.
The first thing to note is that the app includes a front page with the articles that artificial intelligence thinks are most relevant. But he also features a second tab called Headlines (Headlines, in English), where current content from different sources is grouped.
A third section shows our profile and comes with several very interesting functions. On the one hand, Artifact counts how many articles we read and the streak of consecutive days we used the app. In addition, it allows you to access saved links to view later, as well as access your reading history. It is worth clarifying that to enter the latter it is necessary to read at least 10 news.
Another interesting element of Artifact is that it includes statistics for the most read categories and media. But that’s not all, since it gives you the option of synchronizing your mobile contacts to find out who also uses it. In the event that our acquaintances use the app, we will be able to see which are the most popular topics in said “network”.
Artifact embraces AI to improve news reading
Setting up Artifact is really quite simple. When installing the application we will have to select on which topics we want to see articles and news, and we can even add paid subscriptions to means like The New York Times, Bloomberg either The Wall Street Journalamong others.
The app does not require an email or the creation of a username and password to use it, although it does allow us to pair our profile with a telephone number so as not to lose preferences.
The creators of Artifact assure that it is necessary to read about 25 articles in two weeks for the algorithm to correctly personalize the feed major. Therefore, it is likely that at first we will see articles that are not very relevant to our interests, or that are up to two or three days old.
It is also important to note that if we hold down on a publication, we will see a secondary menu with several options. there we can give “I don’t like” to certain contents, so that they do not appear frequently. Or even hide certain sources of information, silence them or even report them.
In addition, from the Artifact configuration it is possible request content from specific media. We only have to enter the address of the website or the feed RSS, and the app takes care of the rest.
At first glance, Artifact still seems to be far from being a revolutionary news manager. It has potential, yes.. But it remains to be seen if, as the days go by, artificial intelligence begins to work its magic and really makes the app a unique experience.