AI could also be inching its approach into the newsroom, as retailers like Newsweek, Sports activities Illustrated, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, CNET and others have experimented with articles written by AI. However whereas most respectable journalists will condemn this use case, there are a selection of startups that assume AI can improve the information expertise — a minimum of on the buyer’s facet. The most recent to hitch the fray is Rio, an “AI information anchor” designed to assist readers join with the tales and subjects they’re most occupied with from reliable sources.

The brand new app, from the identical workforce behind AI-powered audio journalism startup Curio, was first unveiled eventually month’s South by Southwest Competition in Austin. It has raised funding from Khosla Ventures and the top of TED, Chris Anderson, who additionally backed Curio. (The startup says the spherical has not but closed, so it may well’t disclose the quantity.)

Curio itself was based in 2016 by ex-BBC strategist Govind Balakrishnan and London lawyer Srikant Chakravarti; Rio is a brand new effort that may develop the usage of Curio’s AI know-how.

First developed as a function inside Curio’s app, Rio scans headlines from trusted papers and magazines like Bloomberg, The Wall Road Journal, Monetary Instances, The Washington Publish and others, after which curates that content material right into a every day information briefing you may both learn or take heed to.

As well as, the workforce says Rio will hold customers from discovering themselves in an echo chamber by looking for out information that expands their understanding of subjects and encourages them to dive deeper.

Picture Credit: Curio/Rio

In exams, Rio ready a every day briefing offered in one thing of a Story-like interface with graphics and hyperlinks to information articles you can faucet on on the backside of the display that might narrate the article utilizing an AI voice. (These have been full articles, to be clear, not AI summaries.) You advance by the headlines in the identical approach as you’ll faucet by a Story on a social media app like Instagram.

Curio says Rio’s AI know-how gained’t fabricate data and can solely reference content material from its trusted publishers companions. Rio gained’t use writer content material to coach an LLM (giant language mannequin) with out “specific consent,” it says.

Picture Credit: Curio/Rio

Past the briefing, it’s also possible to work together with Rio in an AI chatbot interface the place you may ask about different subjects of curiosity. Instructed subjects — like “TikTok ban” or “Ukraine Struggle,” for instance — seem as small capsules above the textual content enter field. We discovered the AI was generally somewhat sluggish to reply at occasions, however, in any other case, it carried out as anticipated.

Plus, Rio would provide to create an audio episode to your queries if you wish to study extra.

Picture Credit: Curio/Rio

Co-founder Balakrishnan mentioned that Curio customers had requested Rio greater than 20,000 questions because it launched as a function in Curio final Could, which is why the corporate determined to spin out the tech into its personal app.

“AI has us all questioning what’s true and what’s not. You possibly can scan AI websites for fast solutions, however trusting them blindly is a little bit of a raffle,” famous Chakravarti in a press release launched round Rio’s debut at SXSW. “Dependable data is tough to come back by. Solely a fortunate few get entry to fact-checked, verified data. Rio guides you thru the information, turning on a regular basis headlines from trusted sources into data. Checking the information with Rio leaves you feeling fulfilled as a substitute of down.”

It’s laborious to say if Rio is sticky sufficient to demand its standalone product, but it surely’s straightforward to think about an interface like this sooner or later coming to bigger information aggregators, like Google Information or Apple Information, maybe, and even to particular person publishers’ websites. In the meantime, Curio will even proceed to exit with a concentrate on audio information.

Curio is just not the one startup trying to AI to reinforce the information studying expertise. Former Twitter engineers are constructing Particle, an AI-powered information reader, backed by $4.4 million. One other AI-powered information app, Bulletin, additionally launched to deal with clickbait together with providing information summaries. Artifact had additionally leveraged AI earlier than exiting to TechCrunch’s mother or father firm, Yahoo.

Rio is at the moment in early entry, which implies you’ll want an invite to get in. In any other case, you may be a part of the app’s waitlist at rionews.ai. The corporate tells us it plans to launch publicly later this summer time. (As a reward for studying to the underside, 5 of you should utilize my very own invite hyperlink to get in.)