BuzzFeed, the media company once known for viral quizzes and serious journalism, is pushing into artificial intelligence with new consumer-facing apps, even as it faces questions about its own financial future.
A New AI Era for BuzzFeed?
At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti introduced a new spin-off called Branch Office. This venture aims to explore AI through apps designed for creativity and connection. It's meant to extend BuzzFeed's years of AI experiments, Peretti explained.
But the presentation itself wasn't exactly smooth. It started with slideshow glitches, then moved to app demos that mostly met with silence or polite, awkward laughter from the audience. Peretti insisted the company had been working on this in secret for over a year. He told attendees they'd learned a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about new AI formats. He thinks AI is the way to connect people and build community around culture, taste, and shared interests.
This push comes at a critical time for BuzzFeed. The media company recently shared that it has "substantial doubt" about its ability to keep going as a business. It's in talks to fix its money problems. Last year alone, BuzzFeed saw a net loss of $57.3 million. So, this AI pivot isn't just about innovation; it's a big bet on new revenue.
Introducing BF Island and Conjure
Bill Shouldis, a product director at BuzzFeed and the founder of Branch Office, showed off two of the new apps: BF Island and Conjure.
BF Island is a group chat platform. It lets users change and edit photos using AI. That's not groundbreaking on its own, but here's the thing: the app's key feature is a built-in library of online trends and memes. An editorial team creates this content. It's supposed to inspire users to make AI photos that reference fleeting trends, like the McDonald's CEO trying a burger or the "frame-mogging" drama. If you don't know what those are, you're probably not the "very online" audience Branch Office is targeting.
Then there's Conjure. This app feels a lot like BeReal, the photo app that asked users to snap a picture once a day. But Conjure seems to guide users to take daily photos of things other than themselves. For example, during the demo, the prompt was "What lies between the trees and the moon?" Users were supposed to snap a photo of the night sky. Spooky images flashed on screen, followed by a whispered, "What will you conjure?"
The audience didn't seem to get it. After the demo, a lone cough cut through the silence, followed by some uncomfortable laughter. Shouldis then mentioned that AI is in Conjure too, saying the app has an "AI spirit for a CEO." What's surprising here is the lack of clarity, even for the tech-savvy SXSW crowd.
Peretti also introduced Quiz Party, a social app that lets you take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share your results. It's a return to BuzzFeed's roots, but with a social twist.
The AI Hype Cycle and Reality Checks
BuzzFeed's somewhat underwhelming debut of its new AI apps comes as many companies are making big claims about artificial intelligence. But the reality often falls short of the hype. This isn't a new problem in the tech world.
Take the case of Nate, for instance. Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of the "AI shopping app," was charged with defrauding investors. Nate promised a "universal" checkout experience using AI, and it raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures. The company claimed its app could handle online transactions "without human intervention," except for rare cases where the AI failed.
But the U.S. Department of Justice's Southern District of New York alleges Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in the Philippines to manually complete purchases. The DOJ claims the app's actual automation rate was effectively zero percent. The Information investigated Nate's use of human contractors back in 2022. Saniger didn't respond to requests for comment. Nate eventually ran out of money and sold its assets in January 2023, leaving investors with almost total losses.
And Nate isn't alone. A report from The Verge in 2023 noted that an "AI" drive-through software startup was also mostly powered by humans in the Philippines. More recently, Business Insider reported that EvenUp, an AI legal tech unicorn, also used humans for a lot of its work. These examples show a pattern where the promise of AI often outpaces its current capabilities, sometimes leading to significant issues for founders, investors, and user trust.
As BuzzFeed tries to reinvent itself with AI, it's operating in a market where the line between true AI innovation and human-powered solutions can get blurry, making it tough to stand out and prove value.
