BuzzFeed debuts AI slop apps in bid for brand spanking new income

BuzzFeed, the U.S.-based media firm recognized greatest for its quizzes, listicles, and, for a time, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism division, is reinventing itself for the AI period. A minimum of, that’s the pitch.

On the SXSW convention in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti introduced the corporate’s subsequent media foray: a spin-off referred to as Department Workplace, which can discover synthetic intelligence in consumer-facing apps designed for creativity and connection.

The brand new firm is an extension of the experiments BuzzFeed has run for years utilizing AI expertise, Peretti defined, in a halting presentation that started with slideshow glitches, earlier than shifting on to app demos met with silence or a well mannered tittering.

“We’ve been engaged on this secretly for over a yr, and we’ve realized rather a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about what’s coming with new sorts of AI codecs,” Peretti stated. “Utilizing AI is the way in which of connecting individuals, constructing group round these pillars of tradition, and style, and group.”

Invoice Shouldis, a director of product at BuzzFeed and the founding father of Department Workplace, introduced two of the corporate’s new apps: BF Island and Conjure.

The primary product, BF Island, is a gaggle chat platform providing options for altering and enhancing photographs utilizing AI. This isn’t precisely groundbreaking tech in and of itself, however that’s not the purpose.

The important thing function right here will not be the AI toolset however the in-app library of on-line developments and memes, created by an editorial group, which may encourage customers to create AI photographs referencing blink-and-you-miss-it developments just like the McDonald’s CEO taste-testing a burger or the “frame-mogging” drama. (When you don’t know what these are, you’re most likely not the “very on-line” viewers that’s being focused.)

The opposite app, Conjure, is much like BeReal — the once-a-day momentary picture app — besides that it as a substitute seems to information customers to take each day photographs of issues apart from themselves. (As a reminder, BeReal didn’t stick, finally exiting to Voodoo after dropping traction.) Within the demo, as an illustration, the picture immediate was “What lies between the bushes and the moon?,” main the customers to snap a photograph of the night time sky. A sequence of spooky pictures flashed on the display, adopted by a whispered, “What’s going to you conjure?”

We don’t get it, and clearly the viewers didn’t both. After the demo, a lone cough might be heard among the many silence, adopted by uncomfortable laughter.

Shouldis then famous that AI is concerned in Conjure, too, because the app has an “AI spirit for a CEO.” (Once more, what?)

Peretti additionally launched Quiz Social gathering, a social app that allows you to take BuzzFeed quizzes with associates and share your outcomes.

BuzzFeed’s underwhelming presentation comes solely days after the media firm shared that it has “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a business and was participating in strategic conversations targeted on fixing its liquidity challenges. The corporate, which had a web lack of $57.3 million final yr, stated it might focus this yr on its Studio IP and new AI apps, like these.

However even the tech-forward viewers at SXSW was not satisfied.

As one particular person identified through the Q&A session after the presentation, BeReal had struggled to get individuals to return again after the novelty wore off. What would an app like Conjure do to fight the identical type of retention drawback?

Shouldis stated that the app would evolve “and have various kinds of issues occurring and never simply be precisely what it’s as we speak.” He referenced the potential to combine issues like video, audio, and prototyping with Claude Code to construct group.

The premise behind the brand new apps will not be unreasonable: AI can result in quicker software program growth, which makes it doable for firms to extra rapidly iterate and maintain individuals engaged.

“In a means, software program is the brand new content material,” Peretti famous.

After all, earlier than you possibly can iterate, it’s important to entice customers. With its new apps, BuzzFeed appears to have thought extra about what AI can do than what individuals need to do with AI, which isn’t a recipe for achievement.