Artifact can now summarize and explain articles to you like you’re five

Artifact, the recently launched news app from Instagram’s co-founders, announced a new AI feature on Tuesday that can summarize articles for you. But the best part about the feature is that it can summarize in different tones that are varying amounts of silly and surprisingly useful.

If you’re on the latest version of the app, you can summarize an article you’re reading by tapping the “Aa” icon at the top of the screen and then on “Summarize.” After a moment, the summary will appear at the top of your screen in a black box. You can also ask Artifact to summarize in different tones, including “Explain Like I’m Five,” “Emoji,” “Poem,” and “Gen Z,” by tapping the three dots menu in that black box.

Out of curiosity, I tested the feature with my recent review of Horizon Forbidden West: Forbidden Shores. I picked that article because it’s a bit longer than other more news-focused posts I published on Tuesday, and since there were parts of the game that I liked and some that I didn’t, I wanted to see how the AI would handle that context.

Surprisingly, it did decently well across all five of the different tone options. I liked the blunt brevity of “Explain Like I’m Five,” and while “Poem” wasn’t completely accurate, it was good enough to make me smile.

If I use this feature again, I’ll probably stick with the basic “Summary” tone. And Artifact cautions that AI can make mistakes, so if you use the summary feature, you should read the full article to make sure you get the entire picture of a story, no matter which tone you pick.

But I really like that the options are there. Sometimes, I really do need something explained to me like I’m five.