BuzzFeed is starting with AI slop apps with the goal of finding new revenue
BuzzFeed, the US-based news company best known for its quizzes, listicles, and, for a time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, is reinventing itself for the AI era. At least, that’s the tone.
At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti unveiled the company’s next news platform: a spin-off called Branch Office, which will explore artificial intelligence in consumer-facing applications designed to innovate and connect.
The new company is an extension of the experiments BuzzFeed has used for years using AI technology, Peretti explained, in a stand-up presentation that began with slideshow glitches, before moving on to app demos that were met with silence or a polite tone.
“We’ve been working in private for over a year, and we’ve learned a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about coming up with new kinds of AI formats,” Peretti said. “Using AI is a way to connect people, build a community around these pillars of culture, and taste and community.”
Bill Shouldis, director of product at BuzzFeed and founder of Branch Office, introduced two new apps for the company: BF Island and Conjure.
The first product, BF Island, is a group chat platform that offers photo editing and editing features using AI. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking technology, in and of itself, but that’s not the point.
The key feature here is not an AI toolset but an in-app library of internet trends and memes, created by the editorial team, that can inspire users to create AI images that reference blink-and-you-miss-it categories like McDonald’s CEO tasting a burger, or “framing” drama. (If you don’t know what these are, you’re probably not the “most online” target audience.)
Another app, Conjure, is an app similar to BeReal – a temporary once-a-day photo app – except that it appears to direct users to take daily photos of things outside of themselves. (As a reminder, BeReal itself did not stick, eventually leaving Voodoo after losing traction.) In the demo, for example, the image prompt was “What lies between the trees and the moon?”, which leads users to capture a picture of the night sky. A series of scary images flashed on the screen, followed by whispers, “What are you going to put together?”
We don’t get it, and apparently the audience didn’t either. After the demo, a single cough was heard in the silence, followed by an uneasy laugh.
Shouldis then noted that AI is involved in Conjure, too, as the app has the spirit of an “AI for a CEO.” (And, what?)
Peretti also launched Quiz Party, a social app that lets you take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share your results.
BuzzFeed’s tough presentation comes days after the media company shared that it has “significant doubts” about its ability to continue as a business, and is engaged in strategic discussions focused on solving its funding challenges. The company, which posted a net loss of $57.3 million last year, said it will focus this year on Studio IP and new AI applications, such as these.
But even the tech-forward audience at SXSW wasn’t convinced.
As one person said during the Q&A session after the launch, BeReal had a hard time getting people to come back after the novelty wore off. What can an app like Conjure do to combat the same kind of maintenance problem?
Shouldis said the app will evolve, “and have different kinds of things going on and not just be what it is today.” He mentioned the power of combining things like video, audio, and prototyping with Claude Code to build a community.
The basis for new applications is a no-brainer: AI can lead to rapid software development, making it possible for companies to iterate quickly and keep people engaged.
“In some ways, software is the new content,” notes Peretti.
Of course, before you can replicate, you have to attract users. With its new apps, BuzzFeed seems to have thought more about what AI can do than what people want to do with AI, which is not a recipe for success.
