BuzzFeed CEO: AI content creation will be ‘part of our core business’

Coming soon to BuzzFeed: Robot-generated articles and quizzes.

BuzzFeed will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence this year amid the recession that led to its layoffs of 12% last month, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said in an email to employees on Thursday. technology to help produce content.

In 2023, “you’ll see AI-inspired content move from the R&D stage to become part of our core business, enhancing the quiz experience, informing our brainstorming sessions, and personalizing our content for our audience,” Pere said. Ty wrote.

The company’s new focus on using AI to generate content was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said BuzzFeed plans to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool as part of the initiative.

“The creative process will increasingly be assisted and technology-enabled by artificial intelligence,” Peretti predicted in the memo. “If the internet of the past 15 years was defined by algorithmic feeds that curate and recommend content, the next 15 will be defined by AI and data helping to create, personalize and animate content itself.”

Peretti identified artificial intelligence technology and creator-generated content as two trends that will define digital media over the next three years. “Our industry will expand beyond AI-driven curation (feeds) to AI-driven creation (content),” the CEO wrote in the memo.

Still, Peretti says, human editors will remain in control: “To be clear, we’re seeing breakthroughs in artificial intelligence ushering in a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness limitless resources in new ways. Opportunities and applications to unleash creativity are forever. In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, sparking new ideas and inviting audience members to co-create personalized content.”

CNET, a digital technology media owned by Red Ventures, revealed that starting in November 2022, it used an internally developed AI engine to generate 77 stories, accounting for about 1% of the site’s total content. CNET is now discontinuing its use of artificial intelligence technology after discovering that more than half of its stories contained factual errors or plagiarized sections. “We have paused and will resume using the AI ​​tool when we are confident that the tool and our editorial process will prevent human and AI error,” CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo wrote in a post Wednesday.

Separately, New York-based BuzzFeed has struck a multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal with Meta to produce creator content for Facebook and Instagram, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Shares of BuzzFeed, which went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger in December 2021, soared more than 150% on the report, though the stock is still down about 75% from its initial offering price.

According to Peretti’s memo, BuzzFeed’s various creator-driven businesses generate “tens of millions of dollars in revenue” and reach an audience of “well over 200 million people.” For example, on Instagram, Tasty’s Creator Residents and Creator collaborations will generate over 1 billion views in 2022. According to Peretti, more than 20 percent of BuzzFeed.com’s audience is “consuming creator-produced content.”



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