Instagram continues to top the app charts with billions of users and new features, but their co-founders have decided to end one of the projects because of market changes. The app called Artifact is an AI-powered platform that aggregates news and dishes out to people in a crunched manner. It will be shutting down just one year after it was launched by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
The co-founders feel the AI-powered platform is probably not the best use of their investment and would rather work on something that can deliver solid returns. “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,” Systrom wrote.
It is interesting to hear this statement from the co-founders at a time when AI-powered tools are gaining prominence and popularity among consumers. Artifact came out 12 months back and since then it has added features like AI-powered summaries and few more.
The trouble started brewing for Systrom and Co. when they had to start planning for further expansion of the team, which needed more investment. And as the comment above suggests, they clearly weren’t keen on doing so.
News content aggregation is a viable model, that too with the help of AI but adopting the strategy to moderate the content is equally vital and that’s where these two decided to pull the plug before they went further deep into the product. There is a reason why Instagram decided to stay away from news and even Threads, which is supposedly a Twitter (now called X) rival, also avoided focusing on news.
So, what happens to the people who use Artifact? The platform will stop its features in the coming weeks and disable the option for users to comment and new posts. The main engine of news aggregation will go on till the end of February but after that the app will become defunct. Systrom says he is excited about AI in general, so it is likely that both the co-founders come back with AI in a new avatar.
Comments
0 comment