Particle is the startup behind AI-driven newsreaders that not only steal works, but also aim to help publishers bring their products to the web. On Tuesday, the company announced its ability to delve into a variety of categories, including technology, sports, entertainment, science, crime, economics and video games, in addition to the launch of a new Particle.News website that connects news consumers with headlines and AI summaries from various sources.
The company believes that by bringing its products onto the web, it will help reach more readers and provide an alternative way to use enhanced AI technology to keep up with the news.
Like the existing Particle Mobile app, the site offers AI tools designed to help consumers better understand the news. Particles not only summarise stories into important bullet points, but also extract important citations and allow users to ask questions about stories via AI chatbots. These questions and answers from users are available on the new website, but this site does not yet offer the ability to interact directly with AI.
While reading Particle news, if you want to learn more about topics, you can visit the Entity Page, which details information about a particular person, product, or organization mentioned in the story. For example, if you see the words “Trump” or “Knicks” or “Nintendo Switch” highlighted in a headline or news summary, you can click on a page that provides basic information drawn from Wikipedia and links to more stories about the subject.
Particle highlights news outlets that cover stories by directly sharing links to stories along with AI summary. In early testing on mobile, the company discovers that readers are clicking on the publisher’s website via these links, leading the particles and partnering with certain publishers such as Reuters, Fortune, and AFP to display the link more prominently.
On the new website, Particle also displays links to related reports at the bottom of the AI summary, allowing users to click to continue reading the details.
Additionally, when users share a link from the Particle’s mobile app, they connect readers to the website’s dedicated landing page, opening access to particle content to more readers, including those who have not installed the app.
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The addition of AI to the news and journalism markets is controversial, especially when some publishers try to outsource their reporting to AI bots, leading to a large backlash. However, the founders of Particle want to find ways to use AI to help readers better understand the news without stealing traffic from publishers.
Particle was founded in 2023 by Sara Beykpour’s former senior director of Twitter product management and former senior engineers of Marcel Molina’s Twitter and Tesla. This is supported by $4.4 million in seed funding and a $10.9 million Series A led by LightSpeed.
Particle has participated in other efforts to leverage AI in news summaries, including Yahoo, the former parent company of TechCrunch, which acquired the Artifact News app from Instagram co-founder and the Artifact News app with AI-powered features.
Bloomberg, Gannett (USA Today) and The Wall Street Journal have also experimented with summaries of AI articles. However, readers may be more tolerant and tolerant of AI mistakes on news outlet websites reporting news directly compared to independent apps dedicated to AI summaries and Q&AS.