Artifact (app)

Nokto, Inc. was established on March 3, 2022, as a foreign stock company in California, with its headquarters in San Francisco.[5]

The company's main product, Artifact, is the first new product launched by Krieger and Systrom since their 2018 resignation from Instagram after conflicts with parent company Meta, which acquired Instagram in 2012.[6]

Artifact launched on January 31, 2023,[6][7] after the team had been working on it for over a year,[8] offering the option to sign up for a waiting list for its private beta, which grew to about 160,000 people,[9] and then launching in open beta on February 22, 2023.[10][11]

With a team of seven employees based in San Francisco, the app is currently free, with the founders stating that various business models—such as either advertising or subscription fees—may be explored in the future.[12]

Frequently described as "Tiktok for text" and a competitor to Twitter,[12][13] Artifact is a news aggregator that uses machine learning to make personalized recommendations based on topics, news sources, and authors that the reader is interested in.[14][15] In addition to reading articles, the app offers the ability to like articles, leave comments,[16] or listen to an audio version of an article read by AI-generated voices, including a simulation of the voices of Snoop Dogg or Gwyneth Paltrow.[17][18] AI is also used to rewrite clickbait headlines that users have flagged.[19] Artifact is also a social network where users can post links, images and text to their profile, which can be liked or commented on by other users.[20][21] Similar to other social news websites like Reddit, reader accounts have profiles with reputation scores.[16]

• Interview with Systrom and Krieger about Artifact by Ben Thompson (analyst)
• Artifact on Google Play
• Artifact on the App Store