Buzzfeed Hopes AI Apps Can Help Solve Its Financial Woes

Facing steep losses, BuzzFeed turns to a new AI venture designed to reenergize audiences.

BY MOSES JEANFRANCOIS, NEWS WRITER @MOSESJEANS

Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Courtesy company

Buzzfeed is taking a stab at AI, but doing it in their own way. As part of a new venture called Branch Office, the spin‑off aims to introduce a slate of new apps designed to rethink how “people connect on the internet.” The move comes just days after an earnings report cast doubt on the company’s ability to stay afloat financially.

“We’re accelerating into an era of infinite fake news, slop, personalization bubbles, and cuts at the organizations that actually care about content,” said Jonah Peretti, CEO of Buzzfeed. “We need a solution. Branch Office is that solution.” 

At the SXSW conference, Peretti premiered Buzzfeed’s new creative studio, Branch Office, alongside new apps that will come with it: Conjure, BF Island, and Quiz Party. 

Conjure will be the most physically interactive of all the apps. The platform sends users a daily “summons,” a prompt to photograph something specific, turning each submission into a creative offering meant to pull people out of their feeds and back into the real world. 

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BF Island will generate personalized memes for group chats, translating inside jokes and niche lingo into shareable visuals or remixing them into something even funnier. 

Quiz Party, perhaps the most Buzzfeed of them all, reimagines the company’s classic quiz format as a standalone product, making it easier for users to take and share results directly with friends. 

These upcoming apps have been made using generative AI, an exploration that Buzzfeed says isn’t new to them. “BuzzFeed has been running AI experiments for years,” the company noted in a release.  

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