Yahoo announced on Tuesday that it is acquiring the AI-driven news app Artifact, developed by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The company will now add Artifact’s high-tech features into news services across the United States.
The press release by Yahoo states,
Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, but the proprietary AI-powered personalization technology and other features will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app, in the months to come.
Bringing these capabilities into the Yahoo portfolio accelerates the opportunity to connect users with even richer content experiences and tailored personalization,
The commercial terms of the deal are yet to be revealed by either of them. With this deal, Artifact’s features will be helpful for Yahoo News. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s press release indicated that Systrom and Kriege will play advisory roles in this transitioning stage.
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This deal comes just two months after the news startup published a blog post about Artifact’s future. The post stated,
“We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product.”
“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 blog added.
Notably, Artifact first began running as a regular news app. However, by the end, it had become more like Twitter. With already higher competition in that area, including Meta’s Threads, Artifact made the difficult decision to wind down its functions.
The AI-driven platform had a feature that allowed it to personalize itself automatically based on user behavior. Moreover, users could quickly find the content that interests them through Artifact. AI tools were also available for summarizing the news, writing headlines, and more.
