Artifact AI summary feature is one news publishers can learn from

By Jodie Hopperton

INMA

Los Angeles, California, United States

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Whether this is the *best* AI auto summary can be debated, it’s certainly the most fun one I’ve seen. You may remember that a while ago I did a run down of Artifact, the news app by the founders of Instagram (here). As I was checking in on it, I noticed that they have introduced some pretty spectacular AI auto generated summaries on their articles. 

It’s very simple: Click ✨ at the top right to get an auto generated AI summary. Also note the label under the summary on the bottom right screenshot.

Artifact makes it easy for news readers to get an AI-generated summary.
Artifact makes it easy for news readers to get an AI-generated summary.

So why is this fun?

If you click the three dots at the top of the summary, you get some extra options. And these are hilarious.

Want a story explained to you like you're 5 years old? Artifact can help.
Want a story explained to you like you're 5 years old? Artifact can help.

If you have a preference, you can choose to change the default style (last option in the first screenshot above). 

Is this gimmicky? Yes, entirely. But there are two things to note here. 

Firstly, I love that Artifact is experimenting with these tools. Sometimes we spend a lot of time getting these absolutely perfect, but remember that there is some space for fun — our readers may appreciate coming along for the ride.

Secondly, I can see the potential for how summaries can be used for different audiences or different needs. Here you can customise, and that may be a way forward for individuals to state their preferences. 

Note: This isn’t available on all publishers’ articles; for example, The New York Times doesn’t show these. Some brands are going to be stricter than others about having other services play with their content. I imagine The New York Times doesn’t want anyone changing/playing around with their tone of voice.

What I found very interesting is that the example I chose fairly randomly is a News Corp brand. And it’s News Corp that is making a stand on copyright around AI. I am curious where this stands in that view, especially since these articles seem to be scraped rather than formerly licenced.

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About Jodie Hopperton

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