Following the recent shutdown of Artifact, the AI news app from Instagram’s founders, a new contender has emerged: Bulletin. This innovative app leverages AI to enhance your news experience by filtering out clickbait and providing concise news summaries. Unlike Artifact, Bulletin allows users to tailor their news sources, similar to a traditional RSS reader, rather than relying on a curated selection.
Bulletin was developed by Shihab Mehboob, a skilled indie developer known for his Mastodon client Mammoth, which he recently sold to Mozilla. The app is designed for seamless use across all Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro, with an Apple TV version slated for launch soon.
Getting started with Bulletin is straightforward. It comes equipped with a default selection of news categories, such as World News, Technology, Entertainment, Business, Sports, and Fashion. Users can further personalize their experience by adding or removing feeds from the app’s settings.
As you navigate different sections, you can enhance news headlines using AI to combat clickbait and view a “Smart Summary” for a quick overview of articles—similar to ChatGPT functionalities. Mehboob employs OpenAI's GPT technology to power these AI features.
Although Bulletin doesn’t replicate all of Artifact’s unique options, it does offer a simplified “explain like I’m five” summary for more intricate stories. This feature assists in making complex news more digestible. Additionally, the app can translate summaries into local languages and includes a convenient “copy summary” button for easy sharing on other platforms.
While the “Improve Title” feature may not enhance every headline, it can provide clarity in many instances. For example, a Kotaku headline transformed from “The Most Ambitious Space Game Ever Made Is Free This Weekend” to a more precise “No Man’s Sky offers free weekend trial with Omega update.”
Within each news section, users can quickly catch up by tapping the AI button in the top right corner, which presents a pop-up displaying the top news in a concise bullet-point format, reminiscent of Google’s Gemini interface.
In Bulletin's settings, users can deactivate unwanted news categories and customize the For You feed, which aggregates articles from across all sections. One of Bulletin's standout features is the ability to incorporate any website with an RSS feed, making it ideal for dedicated news consumers.
However, adding RSS feeds can be cumbersome, as the app requires users to copy and paste the full RSS URL, unlike Feedly and other readers that automatically detect feeds with website URLs. This presents a challenge since many websites no longer display the iconic orange RSS icon. Users often have to find the correct feed themselves using browser plugins or dedicated readers.
An exciting option includes the integration of iOS’s Live Activities, which allows you to display a news ticker on your Lock Screen—though this can be easily toggled off.
Looking ahead, Mehboob plans to introduce social network updates within the app, drawing inspiration from Tapestry, currently being developed by The Iconfactory, which combines RSS, news alerts, and social feeds into one platform. He mentioned that Mastodon and Bluesky are likely front-runners for this feature, but a timeline hasn’t been disclosed.
Bulletin is free to download, but access to AI functionalities, including clickbait removal and unlimited AI summaries, requires a subscription plan starting at $3.99 per month, with additional annual and lifetime options available.
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