The founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have decided to shut down their recent venture, Artifact, a news app, less than a year after its inauguration. As per the announcement on Medium, the app’s core news reading functionalities will remain until end of February, but commenting and posting features have been disabled immediately.
CEO Kevin Systrom says in a blog post;
We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. The app is beginning to wind down today. Users can no longer add new comments or posts, and Artifact will still let you read news “through the end of February.”
Following its launch in late January 2023, Artifact was made remarkable by the introduction of several innovative features, which included AI-driven summarization of articles, the capacity to comment on articles within the app, and the ability to flag articles as clickbait (which could then be rephrased using AI).
Tarriying not behind news only, the platform encompassed links sharing from the web and a Twitter-like posting mechanism. However, Systrom revealed that some features, like comments and posts, demanded sufficient moderation and oversight, which their team could not provide due to staff limitations.
Artifact was celebrated for its AI-centric features and Reddit-like interaction, and was highly appreciated by journalists for its reporter-friendly amenities, such as dedicated author pages, earning it a prime spotlight on Apple and Google’s app stores.
However, due to the same challenges faced by other news applications’ founders, Systrom and Krieger reached the conclusion that the app’s market potential was not substantial enough to justify further investment. Despite not explicitly stating his future plans, Systrom implied that he might venture into another AI-based project.
For now, Artifact users can enjoy the app for a few more weeks before it goes offline permanently.
