Curio raises funding for app “AI news anchor” Rio

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AI may be trickling into newsrooms, with Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, and CNET all experimenting with this format. But while most respectable journalists would condemn this use case, there are also a number of startups that believe AI can improve the news experience, at least on the consumer side. The latest to join the fray is Rio, an “AI news anchor” designed to give readers access to the stories and topics that interest them most from trusted sources.

The new app, created by the same team behind AI-powered audio journalism startup Curio, was first unveiled at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin last month. We raised funding from Khosla Ventures and the head of TED. chris anderson, also supported by Curio. (The startup says it can't reveal the amount because the round hasn't closed yet.)

Curio itself was founded in 2016 by former BBC strategist Govind Balakrishnan and London lawyer Srikanth Chakravarty, but Rio is a new initiative to expand the use of Curio's AI technology.

First developed as an in-app feature on Curio, Rio scans headlines from trusted newspapers and magazines, including Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Washington Post, and compiles that content into daily news briefings. can do. listen.

Additionally, the team says Rio will prevent users from falling into echo chambers by seeking out news that expands their understanding of a topic and encourages them to dig deeper.

For testing, Rio prepared a daily briefing presented in a story-like interface with graphics and links to news articles at the bottom of the screen. When you tap a link to a news article at the bottom of the screen, an AI voice is used to narrate the article. (To be clear, these are full articles, not AI summaries). Read through headlines the same way you tap on Stories on social media apps like Instagram.

Curio said Rio's AI technology does not fabricate information and only references content from trusted publisher partners. Rio says he will not use publisher content to train LLMs (Large-Scale Language Models) without their “explicit consent.”

Besides the briefing, you can also interact with Rio on the AI ​​chatbot interface and ask questions about other topics of interest. Suggested topics, such as “TikTok Ban” or “Ukraine War,” appear as little pills above the text input box, for example. The AI ​​was a little slow to respond at times, but otherwise worked as expected.

Additionally, if you want to learn more, Rio offers to create audio episodes for your questions.

Co-founder Balakrishnan said the company is spinning out the technology into its own app after Curio users have asked Rio more than 20,000 questions since it was launched as a Curio feature last May. He said he had decided to do so.

“AI has made us all wonder what is true and what is false. AI can scan sites and quickly find answers, but it is not possible to blindly scan them. It’s a bit of a gamble to have faith in ,” Chakravarti said in a statement released on the occasion of Rio’s debut at SXSW. “Trusted knowledge is hard to come by. Only the lucky few have access to fact-checked and verified information. Rio guides you through the news, turning knowledge into daily headlines from trusted sources. “Change it. Checking the news with Rio makes me feel fulfilled instead of depressed,” he added.

It's hard to say whether Rio will be sticky enough to demand a standalone product, but it's hard to say whether an interface like this could one day be used by large news aggregators like Google News or Apple News, or even individual publisher sites. It is easy to imagine that it will be introduced. Meanwhile, Curio will continue to focus on audio news and withdraw from the company.

Curio isn't the only startup looking to AI to improve the news viewing experience. Former Twitter engineers are investing $4.4 million to develop Particle, an AI-powered news reader. Bulletin, another AI-powered news app, was also launched to provide news summaries and tackle clickbait. Artifact also leveraged AI before exiting to TechCrunch's parent company, Yahoo.

Rio is currently in early access. This means you need an invitation to join. If not, you can join the app's waitlist at rionews.ai. The company said it plans to open to the public later this summer. (As a reward for reading to the end, he can use my invite link to get 5 people to join.)