New York: Artifact, the artificial intelligence (AI) powered news app created by Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is shutting down. Systrom, the app’s CEO, announced in a blog post on Saturday.
Artifact was launched last February as a personalised news reading app. On its website, the makers of the app announced,”To our Artifact Users and Partners, We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. Artifact will continue to operate the core news reading capability through the end of February.”
“In order to slim down operations, effective on January 12th, we are removing the ability to add new posts and comments. Your existing posts will remain visible to you on your own profile self-view,” the post added.
Systrom said tha the app was launched a year ago and the makers have been working tirelessly to make a great product. However, he added that the market opportunity is not that big enough to warrant continued investment.
Artifact had added a lot of new features such as AI-powered article summaries, enabling comment on articles within the app, and the ability to mark articles as clickbait. It had also included features to allow people to post links to share cool stuff on the internet and a X-like post feature. Artifact was also considered a modern version of Google Reader, an RSS newsreader that the search engine giant had shut down way back in 2013. Artifact is a newsreader that uses machine learning to personalise the experience for the user. Systrom noted that several publications are now closing down or struggling. The local news has all but vanished while larger publishers have ‘fraught’ relationships with leading technology firms.