A better news reader
Welcome to Advisorator’s Tip of the Week, helping you learn something new from the tech world every Tuesday!
Artifact is a great new app for keeping up with the news, but you might not know it from the surrounding press hype. The app was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, best known as the co-founders of Instagram, and some sites have billed it as a “TikTok for text” or “social news app.”
In reality, Artifact is just a simple app that takes the hassle out of deciding what to read. You pick a handful of preferred topics, and the app provides a feed of stories from reputable publications. It then learns more about your preferences over time, and you can always fine-tune the algorithm with a “show fewer” button for each story.
Some folks might find Artifact to be too bare bones. You can’t manually add publications or newsletters to the feed, and there’s no “Read It Later” functionality akin to Instapaper or Pocket. Those in need of more customizable news readers might look to Matter, Readwise, or Meco instead.
But even in its current state, Artifact already feels more personalized to me than either Apple News and Google News. It’s also a refreshing antidote to social media, scratching the same scrolling news feed itch as Instagram or Twitter, but at a lower emotional temperature. You can download it free for iOS or Android.
Free AI tools to try: Over at Fast Company, I put together a list of 30 generative AI tools for creating text, audio, and images, all with some sort of free component. My personal favorites are the ones that can summarize existing content, such as Eighty (for YouTube videos) and SkimIt.ai (for text).
See also: This list of sites that can detect if the text you’re reading was written by AI.