Curio, a startup that transforms expert journalism into professionally narrated content, now integrates AI technology to produce customized audio episodes based on user preferences. It uses its extensive catalog of high-quality journalism, sourced from partners such as The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and more, to train the AI model, powered by OpenAI technologies. Users can now interact with Curio’s AI assistant, “Rio,” by asking questions and receiving custom-made audio episodes that comprise only fact-checked content, thus, avoiding AI-generated misinformation.
Notably, Curio has received additional strategic investment from the head of TED, Chris Anderson, who previously invested in its Series A round. The company has raised over $15 million from investors including EarlyBird, Draper Esprit, Cherry Ventures, Horizons Ventures, and 500 Startups, among others.
Founded in 2016 by ex-BBC strategist Govind Balakrishnan and London lawyer Srikant Chakravarti, Curio aimed to deliver a subscription-based service giving access to a curated library of journalism translated into audio. The company has collaborated with numerous media organizations to license their content, which is then narrated by voice actors for the Curio app. This approach offers a superior listening experience compared to other news audio platforms, such as Pocket, as Curio's content is read by real people rather than artificial-sounding AI voices.
The integration of AI technology into Curio enables users to receive custom-made audio alongside personally selected audio journalism. This breakthrough offers a promising use case for AI, especially when addressing legitimate concerns about AI chatbots producing false information or inventing data when unable to generate the correct response. Such misinformation, known as “hallucinations,” has been seen when AI chatbots from both Google and Microsoft demonstrated their new search tools.
Users can access Curio's new AI feature by typing their question or prompt into the provided box, similar to interactions with an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. The feature is available on both the Curio web platform and mobile app. Curio's AI quickly processes over 5,000 hours of audio to generate a personalized audio episode complete with an introduction and two articles from the platform's publications.
Though Curio's audio journalism platform is a premium subscription service priced at $24.99 per month (or $14.99 per month if paid annually), users are free to utilize the AI feature as the company wants to encourage widespread user engagement, enabling the AI to learn from preferences. Future updates may include new features such as episode sharing and recommendations based on the inquiries of other users.
Despite its use of AI-generated content, Curio remains committed to human curation and narration. With thousands of subscribers and over a million app downloads, the addition of AI-generated episodes may attract more attention as they capture the unique advantages of AI in news delivery. Curio expects to reach 100,000 paid subscribers by the end of the year.
In today's world where technology adoption is increasingly prevalent, platforms like Curio and the AppMaster io's no-code platform are revolutionizing the way we consume and create content. As more startups adopt AI and other advanced technologies in their applications, the scope for innovation and improved user experience multiplies.
