After Instagram's founders' buzzy AI news app Artifact was shut down, a new app called Bulletin also uses AI to filter out clickbait and summarize the day's news. Except in this case, users can customize their news sources, which is a feature of the app, similar to other RSS readers, rather than relying on a curated selection of news like Artifact. Meanwhile, AI integration can help remove clickbait headlines from the news reading experience. Plus, you can access an article or an overview of all articles in your feed with the click of a button.
Bulletin was created by developer Shihab Mehboob. He is a prolific indie developer who recently sold his Mastodon client Mammoth to Mozilla. The app, called Notes Mehboob, works across his Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and even his Apple Vision Pro. (An Apple TV version will also be released shortly after launch).
Getting started is easy as the News app comes with a default feed set of news from different categories, including world news, technology, entertainment, business, sports, and fashion. However, you can customize your own experience by adding or removing feeds from the app's settings if you wish.
When browsing a section, choose to improve the title of your news post using AI (a feature designed to combat clickbait titles), or tap the “Smart Summary” option to improve the article's title. You can also view a quick summary of ChatGPT styles. Bottom line. Mehboob says he uses OpenAI's GPT to handle the AI component.
Image credits: Newsletter/Shhab Mehboob
These options also offer a variety of AI-powered news summaries, including different styles such as “Explain it like I'm 5 years old,” or just for fun, Gen Z speaking style. In that respect, it reminds me of some of Artifact's best features. Or use only emojis, etc. Bulletin doesn't go that far, but provides a “5-year-old explanation” alternative to the default summary style for perhaps more complex news articles. Conveniently, summaries can be translated into local languages and provide a native “Copy summary” button so you can save or share the news to another app.
Not all headlines will benefit from the “Improve Title” clickbait removal option, but it may be helpful in some cases. For example, a Kotaku article titled “The most ambitious space game of all time is free this weekend” was retitled to the more accurate and complete “No Man's Sky offers free weekend trial with Omega update.” I am.
Within each news section, tap the AI button in the top right corner of the screen to get instant updates. The starlight-shaped icon on the AI button is similar to the one used in Google's Gemini. When tapped, an AI smart summary pops up overlaying the screen with a bulleted list of the top stories in that section.
In Bulletin's settings, you can toggle off news categories you don't want to see, as well as individual news sources included by default in the app. This also helps you customize the app's For You feed, which provides articles from all sections. But what makes this app useful for power users and frequent consumers of news is that other his websites that provide RSS feeds can also be added to the app.
One question about this feature is that you can't just add a website URL like you can with other RSS readers like Feedly and have the app automatically discover relevant RSS feeds. Instead, you must copy and paste the full RSS feed URL into the box provided. This can be a challenge as RSS has become obsolete and many websites today no longer bother displaying the orange RSS icon directing people to their feeds. Instead, you often need to find RSS feeds yourself using a browser plugin or RSS reader that can find the appropriate feed.
A clever feature is the option to use iOS Live Activity to display a news ticker on your lock screen (though you can turn this off if you prefer).
Further into the future, Mehboob will track social network updates within the app, similar to Tapestry, a new app in development by The Iconfactory that combines RSS feeds, news alerts, and social networks in one interface. We would like to add support for Bulletin's developer told TechCrunch that Mastodon and Bluesky would “probably” be the first choices if it moves in this direction, but declined to say when.
Bulletin is free to use, but the AI features are not. Anti-clickbait options and the ability to view unlimited AI summaries are only available in paid plans starting at $3.99 per month. A $14.99 annual and $44.99 lifetime option is also available.