Instagram Decided To Drop AI-Powered News App Artifact

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Instagram has decided to drop one of its projects, the AI-powered news app Artifact.
• Last year, the brand added multiple new features, such as AI-powered article summaries and more.
• Artifact will begin winding down features over the next few weeks, starting with disabling the capability to create new posts as well as comments.

Meta, which owns Instagram, has decided to drop out of one of the projects due to market changes. Within a couple of months, the brand has delivered a number of AI features to the app as per the convenience of the users, enhancing their experience.

Now the reports indicate that the AI-driven news aggregation application created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is gearing up to shut down even just one year after its launch in January 2023.

This is being speculated by a blog post that Instagram is setting up to drop this step. Systrom explained that while Artifact has developed a loyal user base who prefers this application, the overall market opportunity is not large enough to give reason for continued investment.

Regarding this, Systrom has stated that “we have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t enough to warrant continued investment in this way.”

Last year, the brand added multiple new features, such as AI-powered article summaries, the ability for users to comment on and mark articles as clickbait, a Twitter-like posting feature, and many more. The noticeable fact is that these latter features required extensive moderation, which Artifact’s tiny eight-user team could not support.

To aid the transition, Artifact will begin winding down features over the next few weeks, starting with disabling the capability to create new posts as well as comments, whereas posts will still remain visible temporarily just as the team works to reduce moderation needs, and the core news aggregation capability will continue operating through the end of February to give users time to find alternative services.

Meanwhile, the artifact tried to differentiate itself through AI-powered features, such as rewritten article summaries, but its identity never fully joined together into a well-reasoned offering.

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