SmartNews

SmartNews was inspired by my personal desire to be more educated about current events without feeling overwhelmed by the volume of news or confused by a lack of context. News is everywhere, but understanding it often requires background knowledge that many platforms assume readers already have, which pushes people to leave news sites and ask AI tools for explanations. I wanted to bring that interaction directly into the news experience. SmartNews is an interactive news web prototype where users see trending and recent articles from recognized news sources and can search for topics they care about, but instead of only reading, they can ask questions directly related to the article they are viewing to better understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how it may affect their environment. The focus is not on summarizing the news, but on enabling deeper understanding through conversation and optional audio-style narration that reads the article in a more human, broadcast-like way. I built the project as a web app prototype, using Gemini to preview and validate AI interactions, generate contextual explanations, and test narration due to hosting limiting AI interactions as demonstrated through Gemini rather than fully deployed backend logic. Through this project, I learned the importance of grounding AI responses in real content, designing for understanding rather than information overload, and prioritizing rapid prototyping over perfect infrastructure, while also navigating challenges such as hosting constraints, refining AI prompts to avoid generic responses, and designing a news interface that feels lively and engaging rather than static.

Built With

• gemini