Artifact, a unique news app built by the original architects of Instagram, unveiled its latest AI-supported feature. Together with Speechify, they have introduced a new text-to-speech feature that enables users to listen to news articles audibly. By moving beyond the typically monotonous and robotic voice-over, customizable natural voices, accents, and adjustable audio speeds have been made available to users. The feature even includes the voices of pop-culture icons like Snoop Dogg and Gwyneth Paltrow.
To utilise this feature, users simply click the play button at the bottom of the article they selected. Choices of voices, accents, and speeds are aptly provided to start tuning in. Speech speeds can be modified through a convenient slider ranging from the sluggish pace of 0.1x to the rapid 4.5x, guaranteeing a comfortable listening speed for everyone.
The app capability to run in the background, even as users peruse other stories, serves the dual benefit of staying informed whilst engaging in other activities such as working out, commuting, or carrying out household chores.
Artifact provides over 30 free voice options with presently no intentions of instating charges. These voices are bound to a select few accents covering regions like the U.K., Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa. The exclusive celebrity voices of Paltrow and Dogg are not the only USPs, as fun alternates like 'Mr. President', which echoes Obama and 'Dwight', who strikingly resembles Dwight Schrute from 'The Office', are also provided.
This AI-inspired feature forms a part of the many additions Artifact has made post its public launch in February 2023.
In the previous month, Artifact announced the incorporation of AI to rewrite sensationalised, click-bait titles. Users can mark titles deemed as clickbait, following which a GPT-4 model undertakes the rewriting. Altered headlines are distinctively marked with a star icon. The app also relies on AI for summarising articles, enabling the option of fun summaries like 'explain like I’m five' or a series of expressive emojis.
Using AI methodologies, Artifact also empowers its recommendation system to personalise content based on user behaviour such as clicks, reading and dwell time, shares rather than just taking into account what’s trending among the user base.
The features of Artifact hold parallel grounds with other competitor news apps including ByteDance's Toutiao from China, Japan's SmartNews, and News Break, another news app with Chinese heritage. Its competition also extends to areas where information consumers get their news - smartphone news apps provided by Apple and Google, and platforms like TikTok.
With the new text-to-speech feature, Artifact also stands as a strong contender for read-it-later apps such as Pocket, Matter, and Instapaper. In similar veins to Artifact, platforms like AppMaster are making strides in the digital world providing users with a simplified platform to create backend, web and mobile applications without requiring extensive coding knowledge.
