Following CNET's recent confession, Buzzfeed is also embracing artificial intelligence
Buzzfeed will use AI to ‘enhance’ quizzes and personalize content
Buzzfeed is the latest media site to embrace artificial intelligence, as it gears up to use AI engines to generate and personalize online content.
In a memo first seen by the Wall Street Journal and shared by Gizmodo, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti said AI will be one of the “two major trends” in the future of digital media, and wants Buzzfeed to “lead the future of AI-powered content”.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Buzzfeed AI
📅 Buzzfeed will start using AI tools to generate content
💰 It wants to use the tech to enhance quizzes and personalize content
🤷 It will start using it as early as this year
👍 The news follows a wave of backlash against AI-generated media
“In 2023, you’ll see AI-inspired content move from an R&D stage to part of our core business, enhancing the quiz experience, informing our brainstorming, and personalizing our content for our audience,” Paretti said.
“To be clear, we see the breakthroughs in AI opening up a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good. In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, inspiring new ideas and inviting audience members to co-create personalized content.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed will use the AI models developed by research company OpenAI, which has previously created the popular ChatGPT and DALL-E. Buzzfeed could reportedly implement AI as a tool for reader-generated list content, like generating shareable rom-com story ideas off the back of reader prompts.
Speaking to The Verge, Buzzfeed’s VP of communications, Matt Mittenhal, confirmed it will not be using the AI to create news content.
Only last month, Buzzfeed laid off 12% of its workforce – around 180 employees – in an attempt to reduce the company’s costs in the face of a global economic slowdown.
Tech news site CNET recently came under fire for using an AI tool to generate content. For the last year and a half, it’s been using artificial intelligence to create financial explainer articles but has been criticized for not explicitly disclosing them as machine-generated. It also hid the AI content behind an inconspicuous byline that made them appear to be written by humans.
Further problems appeared when several basic math errors were found in CNET’s AI-generated articles, alongside what looks like reams of plagiarized content.
It’s not only media companies that are currently enamored with the prospect of AI. Microsoft recently announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI and plans to integrate the tech with its consumer products.
Whatever you feel about artificial intelligence and its place in media, the burgeoning tech won’t be going away anytime soon. Businesses across the tech industry and beyond will be looking for way to monetize and make sure of AI engines.