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Can AI Save the Media Industry? One Startup Has a Plan for That

AI-powered news platform Particle wants to create a new experience for readers and a new business model for publishers.

Headshot of Lisa Lacy
Headshot of Lisa Lacy
Lisa Lacy Former Lead AI Writer
Lisa joined CNET after more than 20 years as a reporter and editor. Her coverage of AI ranged from a hands-on with OpenAI's empathetic Advanced Voice Mode to in-depth explainers on LLMs, hallucinations and more, as well as a series profiling AI startups. Earlier career highlights include a 2020 story about problematic brand mascots, which preceded historic name changes, and going viral in 2021 after daring to ask, "Why are cans of cranberry sauce labeled upside-down?" She has interviewed celebrities like Serena Williams, Brian Cox and Tracee Ellis Ross. Anna Kendrick said her name sounds like a character from Beverly Hills, 90210. Rick Astley asked if she knew what Rickrolling was. She lives outside Atlanta with her son, two golden retrievers and two cats.
Expertise Technology | AI | Advertising | Retail
Lisa Lacy
3 min read
A newsstand operator sells a newspaper.
Andrew Hetherington/The Image Bank via Getty Images

It's a tough time to work in the media industry.

That's been true for at least 20 years as advertising moved online and publishers began scrambling for new revenue sources.

Research shows the US has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper jobs in that time period. In 2023 alone, nearly 2,700 journalism jobs disappeared. Meanwhile, audiences are shrinking. That's true for multiple media types, including local TV, newspapers and public radio.

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It's a complex issue with no easy solution, but there could be a role for AI, which is finding its way into all sorts of fields, from speeding up communication to potentially reinventing how we interact with devices. Now an AI-powered news platform called Particle wants to use AI to create a new experience for readers and a new business model for the news industry. 

"About a year and a half ago, we started thinking about ... how we can incorporate [generative AI] into a new generation of apps and utilities that connects people with the content that they care about in a way that is an improvement on that user experience," said co-founder and CEO Sara Beykpour.

Particle provides what it calls a streamlined and personalized news experience that connects you to the stories and content you're interested in.

For any given topic, it aggregates multiple news sources, generates an overall summary and allows you to ask questions, which it answers using those sources. Particle also has features called Explain It Like I'm Five, which simplifies the language to help you understand complicated topics, and Opposite Sides, which lays out the arguments in an article to further explain multiple points of view. Particle is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 and GPT-4o.

According to Beykpour, the San Francisco-based startup double-checks generated content against source content to ensure accuracy.

"[The platform] basically takes the generated content [and] does a double check against the source content to ensure that it is supported by something that a reputable publisher has said, and we also provide direct citations for that evidence," she said.

Beykpour was senior director of product management at Twitter until December 2021, where she worked on the subscription service Twitter Blue. That included the acquisition of Scroll, a subscription service that removed ads from news sites and then shared a cut of revenue with publishers like USA Today, Vox and The Atlantic.

"They were trying to think about new business models for reading news in a way that you could bypass some paywalls and compensate the publisher in the process," she said. "And that seed never really left my brain."

In addition to improving the user experience, Particle wants to create what she called a win-win environment for publishers and journalists.

Founded in February 2023, Particle has partnerships with Reuters and Axel Springer, whose titles include Business Insider and Politico, as news sources.

The name Particle came from co-founder and CTO Marcel Molina, who's a Twitter and Tesla alum. It includes an allusion to the word "article" but is also the essential atomic element of matter that can be infinitely divided into subatomic particles.

"We thought that was a great analogy for what we're trying to do with that user experience, which is to give you the elemental information that you need to know about a story, but also let you go infinitely deeper if that's your interest," Beykpour said.

Earlier this month, Particle closed a $10.9 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Axel Springer also participated. The startup plans to use proceeds to hire staff, sign additional media partnerships and prepare for a US launch.

Beykpour didn't share a launch date for Particle, which is in private beta.

"We want to make sure that this is a product that is meeting the user need ... to help people get connected to the things that they care about," she said. "And so we're refining on that and we will drive towards launching when it's ready from that perspective."

This is one of a series of short profiles of AI startups, to help you get a handle on the landscape of artificial intelligence activity going on. For more on AI, see our new AI Atlas hub, which includes product reviews, news, tips and explainers.