Artifact, the recently launched news app from the founders of Instagram, announced a new AI feature on Tuesday. Articles can be summarized for you. But the best part about the feature is that it can be summed up in different colors with varying amounts of silly and surprisingly useful.
If you’re using the latest version of the app, you can summarize an article you’re reading by tapping the “Aa” icon at the top of the screen and then Summarize. After a moment, the summary will appear at the top of your screen in a black box. You can also ask Artifact to boil down to different tunes, including “Explain Like I’m Five,” “Emoji,” “Poem,” and “Gen Z,” by tapping the three dots menu in that black box.
Out of curiosity, I tested the feature with my recent review of Forbidden Horizon West: Forbidden Beaches. I chose this article because it’s a bit longer than the other news-focused posts I made on Tuesday, and since there were parts of the game I liked and some I didn’t, I wanted to see how the AI would handle that context.
Surprisingly, it did well in all five different tone options. I liked the sharp brevity in “Explain Like I’m Five,” while “Poem” didn’t in full Delicate, it was good enough to make me smile.
If I use this feature again, I’ll probably stick to the basic “abstract” tone. And Artifact warns that the AI can make mistakes, so if you use the summary feature, you should read the entire article to make sure you get the full picture of the story, no matter what tone you choose.
But I really like that the options are there. Sometimes I really need to be explained like I’m a five year old.
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