Image Credit: artifact
Yahoo is buying AI-powered messaging app Artifact from Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. declared On Tuesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, and its AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app, in the coming months. Yahoo is the parent company of TechCrunch.
Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo in a “consultative capacity” during the transition.
The announcement comes months after Artifact said it was shutting down its operations because the market opportunity was not large enough to warrant continued investment. Although Artifact started out as a simple messaging app, the end result looked like a Twitter alternative. There is already a lot of competition in that space with many competitors including Meta's Threads.
Artifact's technology disseminates content that users want to see and adapts to their interests over time. As a result, users get a personalized feed of the news they want to read. The app has several AI tools to summarize messages, rewrite clickbait headlines and surface better content. Yahoo says bringing these capabilities into its portfolio “accelerates the opportunity to connect users with even better content experiences and personalization.”
“Artifacts has become a beloved product, and we're excited to continue to grow that technology and further our mission to become a trusted guide to digital information and a great curator that connects people to the content that matters most,” he said. Kate Downs Mulder, SVP and general manager of Yahoo News, in a press release.
Systrom said in a press release that Artifact's technology has the potential to benefit millions of people, and “the Yahoo product brings scale to help us achieve what we envisioned, while connecting people to trusted sources of news and information. Review as always.”
