Buzzfeed Looks To AI To Write Content Nobody Reads

BuzzFeed announced earlier this year that it would allow humans to utilize AI chatbots to design quizzes, which sounded unique and exciting.

It wasn’t.

Despite the initial claims, it became clear that BuzzFeed employed AI to generate content beyond quizzes. The site was flooded with poorly written, hackneyed, and generally unhelpful pieces. 

Jonah Peretti, co-founder and CEO of BuzzFeed Inc., which owns BuzzFeed, Tasty, HuffPost, and many others, recently fessed up that the company will go all-in on using artificial intelligence to generate content, with much of that content intended to appeal to specific demographics.

On May 11, during the company’s annual Investor Day, Peretti and his team disclosed the new plan, the details previously revealed by freelance journalist Lee Fang on Twitter.

According to Peretti, people view AI as an exciting creativity tool that opens new avenues for storytelling and entertainment. He says it allows one to explore new product offerings to collaborate and innovate with clients and partners. He called it a new frontier in media.

Peretti feels that in the next few years, AI will replace most static content, and readers will expect all content to be infused with artificial intelligence. According to Peretti, the new AI-driven material would be more personalized.

The CEO of BuzzFeed went on to say that large corporations will be the “biggest beneficiaries” of the transition to AI-generated content because they will be able to sell more things to more users as a result of the increased engagement.

BuzzFeed’s president, Martin Marcela, has spoken highly of the potential for artificial intelligence to help the company increase content output without adding cost. He detailed how the tech will be used to develop chatbots and games. In other words, more banal junk that nobody with “real intelligence” would want to read.

He mentioned that behind-the-scenes, editors would use it to develop headlines and topics.

Robert Evans, a journalist, called Jonah Peretti “wrong,” arguing that deploying AI will eventually destroy any content-providing company that seeks to profit over the long run.