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BuzzFeed, a US-based company best known for its quizzes, articles, and, for a while, Pulitzer Prize winner journalism division, and recycling only for AI time. At least, that’s the setup.
At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti be explained The company’s result: a launch called Branch, which will focus on artificial intelligence in consumer-oriented applications designed for creativity and communication.
The new company is an extension of the efforts that BuzzFeed has been making for years using AI technology, Peretti explained, by stopping a demo that started with graphical glitches, before moving on to software demos that were met with silence or polite shuddering.
“We’ve been working undercover for over a year, and we’ve learned a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about what’s coming with new AI models,” Peretti said. “Using AI is a way to connect people, to build people around these pillars of culture, taste, and community.”
Bill Shouldis, director of product at BuzzFeed and founder of Branch Office, presented the company’s two new apps: BF Island and Conjure.
First thing, BF Islandis a social media platform that offers a feature to edit and edit images using AI. This isn’t cutting edge technology, in and of itself, but it’s not.
The most important thing here is not an AI tool but an internal library of Internet behavior programs and memes, created by a team of editors, that can encourage users to create AI images that show the behavior of the McDonald’s CEO. taste-test the burgeror “skin irritation” drama. (If you don’t know what this is, you’re probably not the “highest internet” people under review.)
Another app, Conjure, is a similar app to BeReal – a once-a-day photo app – except that instead it seems to guide users to take daily pictures of themselves. (As a reminder, BeReal itself did not stick, in the end from Voodoo after losing power.) In the show, for example, the prompt was “Is there between the trees and the moon?”, leading users to draw a picture of the night sky. A series of terrifying images appeared on the screen, followed by whispers, “What will you realize?”
We don’t know, and clearly the audience didn’t. After the show, only a cough can be heard in the middle of the silence, followed by an unpleasant laugh.
They should also note that AI is involved in Conjure, too, as the app has “the CEO’s AI spirit.” (Again, what?)
Peretti also launched Quiz Party, a social app that lets you take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share your results.
BuzzFeed’s troubling presentation comes just days after the news company shared that it was “deeply concerned” about its ability to continue as a businessand he was conducting technical discussions focused on fixing his financial problems. The company, which lost $57.3 million last year, said it will focus this year on its Studio IP and new AI programs, such as these.
But even the tech audience at SXSW wasn’t satisfied.
As one person pointed out in the Q&A session after the presentation, BeReal had a hard time getting people to come back after the weirdness. What can a program like Conjure do to solve this same storage problem?
Mr. Shouldis said that the program will change, “and have different types of things that are happening and not just be what it is today.” He also mentioned the possibility of combining things like video, audio, and photography with Claude Code to create a group.
The implications of these new applications are clear: AI can accelerate software development, allowing companies to iterate faster and retain people.
“In a way, software is what’s new,” Peretti said.
Yes, before you repeat, you need to attract users. With its new apps, BuzzFeed seems to have focused more on what AI can do than what people want to do with AI, which isn’t helpful.
