Bulletin, a new app from Instagram’s creators, uses AI to eliminate clickbait and summarize the day’s news after Artifact was shut down. Instead of Artifact’s curated news choices, users may modify the app’s news sources like any other RSS reader. The AI integration removes clickbait headlines from news reading. A button lets you see a summary of the article or all feed articles.
Bulletin was established by prominent independent developer Shihab Mehboob, who sold Mastodon client Mammoth to Mozilla. Mehboob said the software works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. A post-launch Apple TV version is also coming.
The news app has preset feeds for world news, technology, entertainment, business, sports, fashion, and more, making it easy to use. To personalize your experience, you may add or remove feeds from the app’s settings.
You can use AI to enhance news post headlines to avoid clickbait and press “Smart Summary” to get a ChatGPT-style summary of the article’s important points as you explore the sections. He uses OpenAI’s GPT for AI components, explains Mehboob.
These choices recall Artifact’s finest features, which included AI-powered news summaries in several forms, such as “explain like I’m five,” for fun, in Gen Z speech, or using just emojis. The bulletin offers an “explain like I’m five” alternative to the usual summary format for more difficult news articles. It translates summaries into your local language and has a native “copy summary” button for saving or sharing news in another app.
The “Improve Title” clickbait elimination option may help certain headlines. The Kotaku post “The Most Ambitious Space Game Ever Made Is Free This Weekend” is retitled “No Man’s Sky offers free weekend trial with Omega update.”
The AI button at the top right of each news segment, whose starlight-shaped symbols mimic Google’s Gemini, lets you catch up fast. After tapping, the AI Smart Summary will appear with a bulleted rundown of the section’s main news.
Bulletin lets you disable news categories and default news sources in its settings. This lets you tailor the app’s For You feed, which includes content from all areas. The program is useful for power users and heavy news consumers since you can add any RSS-feeding website.
It would be nice if you could simply input the website URL like Feedly and have the app automatically find the RSS feed. Copy and paste the RSS feed URL into the field instead. Since RSS is out of style, many websites no longer display the orange RSS indicator that links to their feed. You frequently have to find the RSS feed yourself using a browser plug-in or RSS reader.
Using iOS’s Live Activities to display a news ticker on your lock screen is ingenious (you can disable it).
The Iconfactory’s new software, Tapestry, integrates RSS feeds, news alerts, and social networks into one interface. Mehboob hopes to incorporate functionality for social network updates in the app later. Bulletin’s creator tells Eltrys that Mastodon and Bluesky would “most likely” be his top choices, although he didn’t specify a timeline.
AI features cost money, but Bulletin is free. Paid options start at $3.99 per month for anti-clickbait and limitless AI summaries. Optional $14.99 per year and $44.99 lifetime plans are available.
New AI-powered news reader Bulletin combat clickbait and summaries content.
