Mastodawn

Jairaj Devadiga Mar 14

Buzzfeed's shares go from $15 to 70 cents, now approaching bankruptcy, seemingly as a result of going all-in on 'AI' generated content.

This emerging pattern does not speak to a wicked problem. Rather, it should be no surprise that people don't want to read machine-generated content that outwardly pretends to come from a person. Because it is innately &intrinsically deceptive, which people do not like, so ending trust that will be very hard to win back. If at all

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/buzzfeed-disastrous-earnings-ai

BuzzFeed Nearing Bankruptcy After Disastrous Turn Toward AI

Three years after its pivot to AI, the writing is on the wall for BuzzFeed. The company said there's "substantial doubt" it can keep going.

Futurism

Julian Oliver Mar 14

Self-confused startup: But our 10 thousand genAI things are amazing everyday. Why aren't people reading and sharing our AI things.

People of the Obvious: because you are pretending you made it and that is lying and grifty and gross, just like it has been throughout the entirety of human culture.

@JulianOliver that's so sad so see! Buzzfeed did award winning journalism (despite the jokes we do about it) and seeing it run into the ground is sad

Jeri Dansky Mar 14

@saxnot That was my reaction, too. BuzzFeed News was amazing, once upon a time.

Katzedecimal Mar 14

@jeridansky
And now every article seems to be just regurgitated Xitter posts 😒
@saxnot

@JulianOliver It is sad, but it speaks to the incompetency of its management more I think. They were in desperate straits ($180M in debt) and AI felt to them like that lifeline (all the traffic none of the human salaries!) the message here is that AI is not capable of replacing people. Not now, possibly not ever.

@ChuckMcManis @JulianOliver Hasn't something similar happened to Atlassian's stock price? For the same reasons given above?

It certainly seems to be playing with that. I haven't seen their personnel layoffs being associated with AI 'replacement' but perhaps.

@JulianOliver Sad it has reached this state, I always thought BuzzFeed was a cool cultural product of its time and lived through its heyday, even if it wasn't necessarily for me. It made a few good, or at least interesting pivots.

Part of the problem might be in thinking that people will want AI-generated when it's built a brand and reputation on being human-made. "AI-native" brands and content are now (sadly) abundant in ways that shock me. And another part of it might just be beating a dead horse when people get less and less of their news and information from media companies. Exit on a high, with dignity towards staff, rather than...this.

Julian Oliver Mar 14

@diemkay Well said.

Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈Mar 14

@JulianOliver bro, you're just prompting it wrong, bro.

@JulianOliver
Never used the site. The closest I ever got to it was getting sent links by the kind of acquaintances that put multiple emoji's in their opener/subject lines. From that scant exposure I'm not surprised BuzzFeed pivoted deep into AI, it probably improved their content.

Grrsly Adams Family Vacation Mar 14

@JulianOliver Reading text written by a pattern matching machine can be helpful but it's generally not enjoyable.

@JulianOliver good.gif

@JulianOliver Why would anyone go to buzzfeed to look at slop when they can already generate slop for free themselves?

Maybe this will change when prompt tokens cost like £5 a prompt lol. "Come to buzzfeed for mass slop with ads".

Corb_The_Lesser Mar 14

@JulianOliver You can't do journalism when the people who own the business want to sell ad-luring "content" and don't care if it's journalism or gibberish.

The sites I've walked away from after they've switched to AI produce posts so awful and pointless and weird that it's obvious that they're only targeting clicks from the junk sites that litter Google search results.

ramblingsteve Mar 14

@JulianOliver I love the logic of pivoting to slop, stock tanks, lay off all the writers to cut costs, stock tanks harder, go bust, move to launching slop startups 🤦‍♂️ they just can't see the common denominator.

Artstories Mar 14

@JulianOliver It's very easy for me: If you don't bother to think and write, I won't bother to read.

I do get the feeling that maximizing productivity and churning out more and more content doesn't lead to more quality. It's more like fast fashion. It's cheap but garbage and nobody really likes it.

Aral Balkan Mar 14

@JulianOliver I may not have any fucks left to give but I still have a warehouse full of small violins to distribute.

🎻

@JulianOliver Another victim of the "pivot to AI" after "pivot to video" got many outlets before them. I assume that Meta is behind this pivot and failure.

@JulianOliver @cowman ok byeeeee on to the next shitheads who took the cursed path

soup2nuts Mar 14

@JulianOliver ... Journalism needs competent journalists. And, way better leadership at the helm. People respond to GOOD OBJECTIVE Journalism. If Buzzfeed wants to turn this around - hire journalists. fire current leadership. And,understand what journalism is supposed to be. Just my opinion.

Brian Johnson Mar 14

@JulianOliver 100% agree that AI produced stuff is generally “slop” and eventually it will catch up. Can’t help wondering if that’s the whole story, though.

Like much of this industry (and the economy) in general) there is a push to produce more and more, or more precisely, keep growing, even in areas that have a natural ceiling - and at the lowest cost possible. The news articles used to be all about outsourcing to countries with the lowest labor costs, now it’s all about replacing human labor entirely.

BuzzFeed had captured a cultural feeling, a cultural moment. Maybe the real story is that they were expected to grow that forever.

Conny Nasch Mar 14

@JulianOliver I have never used AI, and this substantiates my gut feel! 🤔

Ken Brucker Mar 14

@JulianOliver every buzzfeed headline I’ve seen recently screams clickbait, and they are mostly on uninteresting or unserious topics. “33 wild, gross, and disrespectful things …” “people cannot believe who…” it’s all trash.

Chaddicus Mar 14

@JulianOliver this is very interesting to me. Unlike big tech corpos, Buzzfeed has been recognized for years as a platform that offers very little of value. While it is an isolated case, the fact that it collapsed this quickly and thoroughly after embracing "AI"-generated content does suggest to me that the big tech corpos staying afloat is less an acceptance of their use of the technology but more of a compromise users are willing to make for a service they find useful or habitual enough.

@iveyline Mar 15

@JulianOliver if you move from intelligent to banal there is a heavy price to pay.