Artifact, the AI-powered social news feed app created by Instagram’s founders, has launched and is available to the public.
Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the company following Meta’s acquisition of it. Their latest project is an AI-powered news feed that brings in social aspects.
The project became available as an invite-only preview in late January, but has now launched to the public. Users can download the Android and iOS apps to get started.
Instagram’s founders are on to their next venture, launching Artifact, an AI-powered social news feed app.
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram and helped lead the company through its acquisition by Facebook. After reported tension over Mark Zuckerberg taking a more hands-on approach to Instagram’s day-to-day operations, the pair left the company.
Systrom and Krieger are now launching their new project in an effort to utilize AI and machine learning in the social media space. The company’s site describes Artifact as “a personalized news feed driven by artificial intelligence.”
According to The Verge’s Casey Newton, the app will show users a personalized and curated news feed. Clicking on a story will show similar stories, TikTok-style. The company is also beta testing features that will let users post links to stories and allow other users to follow them. Another feature would allow users to offer commentary and privately discuss linked news items.
Systrom emphasized the importance of machine learning to the new app.
“Throughout the years, what I saw was that every time we use machine learning to improve the consumer experience, things got really good really quickly,” he told Newton.
The two founders saw the possibilities of combining machine learning with a TikTok-like approach but with a focus on text rather than video.
“I saw that shift, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the future of social,’” Systrom said. “These unconnected graphs; these graphs that are learned rather than explicitly created. And what was funny to me is as I looked around, I was like, ‘Man, why isn’t this happening everywhere in social? Why is Twitter still primarily follow-based? Why is Facebook?’”
Given Systrom and Krieger’s past success, there’s a good chance Artifact could be the next big thing in social media.
Users can join the waitlist here.
When we think of the story of Noah, many imagine a giant boat that managed to hold two of every animal species on Earth. And that giant boat is typically “pointy”.
Apparently the image had by many was completely wrong. According to a recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet, the boat was round in shape.
“It’s a perfect thing,” says Irving Finkel, the assistant keeper of the Middle East at the British Museum where the tablet is currently on display. “It never sinks, it’s light to carry.”
Finkel was lucky enough to get a hold of the rare artifact when a man brought in the then badly damaged tablet, which his father had came by in the Middle East during WWII. The tablet, which is said to be roughly the size of a mobile phone, would turn out to be, “one of the most important human documents ever discovered.”
The tablet is the detailed record of a Mesopotamian god’s instructions for building a giant vessel. Some believe that the tablet, found in what is now Iraq, and other writings were stories that were passed on to Jews that were held captive in Babylon thousands of years ago. These tales were then thought to have found their way into Jewish folklore.
Finkel’s enthusiasm over the ancient text is hardly surprising and according to other experts, to be expected.
The British Museum had made an “an extraordinary discovery,” David Owen, professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at Cornell University.
While Elizabeth Stone, who is an expert on the antiquities of ancient Mesopotamia at Stony Brook University in New York, was enthusiastic about the discovery, she didn’t appear willing to rule out the more familiar boat shape.
“People are going to envision the boat however people envision boats where they are,” said Stone. This meant that if round boats are the norm in a certain part of the world, it makes sense that the text’s author would visualize Noah’s Ark as round.
“Coracles are not unusual things to have had in Mesopotamia.”
What do you think? Would Noah’s Ark have been round or pointed? Was there even an ark at all? Share your comments below!
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Jared Leto is a man of many talents; he is an actor, having starred in both big-budget productions and small indie projects alike, as well as a musician, song writer, and singer, perhaps best well known in this aspect for fronting his band, Thirty Second To Mars. The band made it big with their album and single, “This Is War.” The album, while a huge success, was also a source of strife and trouble for the band, as their record label, Virgin/EMI, sued the artists for $30 million on the grounds of a “breach on contract” having to do with the album. The bandmates turned this crisis on its head, however, by retaliating in a unique way; they made a documentary.
Jared Leto, along with his bandmates Shannon Leto and Tomo Miličević, are out to reveal to the world just how barbed and thorny the music industry can be for musicians. Leto took it upon himself to create, record, and direct the documentary, titled “Artifact,” which recorded all the intimate details of the battle with EMI for the band’s custody over their creative and financial freedom.
On the topic of the film, Leto had this to say; ”I’m excited to share our insight on how this business really works. We get down to the nitty-gritty. We talk about this business inside and out and reveal quite a few things I think people will be shocked to realize. I think we made the right decision. Sometimes you have to fight in order to be free, and we did exactly that. We fought for what we knew was right, what we knew was fair. We were sued by EMI, but we didn’t let that intimidate us.”
Leto does not, however, consider himself a crusader in the fight against the music industry at large. In fact, he was quoted as saying, “I’m not anti-record company, I’m just anti-greed. I think that record companies and corporations in general can treat audiences and artists fairly and still make a ton of money, which is what they’re designed to do, make money — that’s what corporations are built for — and to service shareholders and stockholders.”
The film was released on iTunes, and has been a huge success. The piece won the 2012 Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice documentary award, and has soared to a strong #2 place on iTune’s list of most popular documentaries.
[Image courtesy of Jared Leto’s official Twitter.]
