In October 2010, two young engineers named Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram. The social network became an absolute success, and Facebook bought it for $1,000 million in 2012. Its creators stayed with the project for several years, but left the company in 2018 over alleged disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg. Now, five years later, Systrom and Krieger are preparing a new development.

artifact. That’s the name of the new mobile app, which will essentially be “a kind of text TikTok,” according to The Platformer. Idea: deliver a personalized news thread powered by machine learning (machine learning) to learn from our interests.

Available soon. The tool is currently in private beta, but you can request access to the pre-release by entering your phone number—be careful with the country code—on the project’s official website. This will add you to the waiting list and you will be notified when your “invitation is ready”. The app is available for both Android and iOS.

Source: Reuters Institute.

People don’t watch the news anymore, so… Artifact’s proposal seems to capitalize on the appeal of other social networks like TikTok and Instagram, which have become sources of information for new generations. The Reuters Institute revealed that in June 2022, young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are increasingly making news on social networks. Even more so than digital media or news apps.

Wait, Twitter didn’t do that? Artifact’s proposal actually appears to be a frontal attack on Twitter, which has long been a cornerstone when it comes to getting information quickly via text as the absolute hero. latest changes timeline They’re aiming for exactly what Artifact is looking for: using artificial intelligence to recommend content and news based on our previous activity.

Artifact will also be a social network. While the app currently focuses on a news feed powered by the AI ​​engine, Systrom and Krieger are preparing two new features. First, view articles posted by users you choose to follow. The other is a mailbox for direct messages that lets you talk about those posts privately with your friends.

Metin is once again the protagonist.. Betting is a bit risky. First, and as we said, because Twitter already seems to encompass some of what Artifact wants to do. True, yes, it’s true that the network has lost followers due to Elon Musk’s erratic decisions. Second, short videos, where TikTok revolutionized everything, seemed to be the new preferred format for consuming news and other content.

Google and “Transformer” as key components. In 2017, Google released Transformer, a neural network architecture for understanding language. This system has helped machine learning systems progress much faster and has been one of the pillars of ChatGPT’s development.

Artifact follows the evolution of social networks. As they explained on Platformer, at first social networks showed you what your friends thought was interesting, as did Facebook. Then they showed things based on who you follow, just as Twitter does. We’re now at the stage where they show you what the algorithm says might be of interest to you, whether from people you follow or know. This has revolutionized TikTok’s algorithm, and Artifact wants to do the same for text.

quality information. The ad pattern seems to be once again the most likely way for this app and social network to generate revenue. To be relevant, Systrom and Krieger are clear that they want to provide quality information and will go to reputable sources and will grow in publications as they verify they are reliable. They seem to have no issues with censorship and moderation—they claim they will remove content that contains misinformation and false promises—and the algorithm will take into account the time the user spends reading the content, not generating many comments or clicks. a certain piece