Microsoft releases “Hummingbird,” an AI powered news curator for Android

Kareem Anderson

Despite already offering MSN News as a user-curated news app in the Google Play Store, Microsoft thought it might be nice to mix things up with a new news app called Hummingbird.

Hummingbird differs from MSN News by offloading the pressure of manually curating news, to a new AI-powered processing platform.

Microsoft warned at its developer conference this year of its company-wide intent to lean hard on its artificial intelligence platforms to power its services going forward.

Aside from offering an AI-powered algorithm that would ideally serve up content similar to a readers interest, Hummingbird doesn’t seem all that different than current news options.

Starting the app should be familiar with users as it prompts for an account login, then offers a basic selection of news options and share options.

Microsoft seems to be experimenting with the app as it does not come up in regular Play Store searches but instead requires an APK download, and appears to be US only for the moment.