Have little patience for reading past the first few lines of an article? So do most of us in this digital age.
In fact, you’re probably hoping I get to the point just about now. If that’s the case, just run it through CruxFinder, a Facebook Messenger bot that uses artificial intelligence to pull out a shortened summary of the key points of any piece of news.
As a reporter who has to remain up-to-date on the details of a constantly changing industry like mobile tech, this is an extremely valuable service — especially for mid-size, information-dense pieces.
For instance, the bot does an impressive job of scanning articles on plan pricing, new app features or posts about specs and availability and providing a handful of brief bullet points. See above for an example summary of this article about Nintendo’s Joy Con woes on MobileSyrup.
Where it falters is on lengthy features and opinion pieces, which are less about relaying timely information and more focused on telling a story.
That’s not a major downside for the app, however, as most people factor in spending quality time with longer pieces and don’t desire assistance in speeding up the process. The true downside is that the AI isn’t quite as clever as I’d hoped it would be, sometimes grabbing overly large chunks of text.
Hopefully with time this aspect will improve, but in the meantime, it’s good enough for me to sift through my morning news haul, and is a strong competitor with other free tools, like freesummarizer.com.
Get chatting with CruxFinder here.
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