Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
BuzzFeed, the US-based media company best known for its quizzes, listicles and, for a time, Pulitzer Prize winner journalism division, is reinvent itself for the AI era. At least, that’s the speech.
At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti inserted The company’s next media foray: a spin-off called Branchwhich will explore artificial intelligence in consumer-facing applications designed for creativity and connection.
The new company is an extension of experiments BuzzFeed has conducted for years using artificial intelligence technology, Peretti explained, in a choppy presentation that began with glitches in slideshows, before moving on to app demos that were met with silence or polite laughter.
“We’ve been working on this in secret for over a year and have learned a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about what’s coming with new types of AI formats,” Peretti said. “Using AI is the way to connect people and build a community around these pillars of culture, taste and community.”
Bill Shouldis, chief product officer at BuzzFeed and founder of Branch Office, introduced two of the company’s new apps: BF Island and Conjure.
The first product, BF Islandis a group chat platform that offers features to change and edit photos using AI. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking technology in and of itself, but that’s not the point.
The key feature here is not the AI toolset, but the in-app library of online trends and memes, created by an editorial team, which could inspire users to create AI photos that reference blink-and-you-miss-it trends, like those of McDonald’s CEO. try a hamburgeror the “frame mogging” drama. (If you don’t know what those are, they’re probably not the “very online” audience you’re targeting.)
Another app, Conjure, is similar to BeReal, the once-a-day temporary photography app, except that it appears to guide users to take daily photos of things besides themselves. (As a reminder, BeReal itself was not maintained, in the end going out to voodoo after losing traction.) In the demo, for example, the photo prompt was “What’s between the trees and the moon?”, prompting users to take a photo of the night sky. A series of eerie images appeared on the screen, followed by a whisper: “What are you going to conjure?”
We don’t understand it and clearly neither does the public. After the demonstration, a lone cough was heard in the silence, followed by an awkward laugh.
Shouldis then noted that AI is also involved in Conjure, as the app has an “AI spirit for a CEO.” (Again, what?)
Peretti also introduced Quiz Party, a social app that lets you take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share your results.
BuzzFeed’s disappointing filing comes just days after the media company shared it has “substantial doubts” about its ability to continue as a businessand was engaging in strategic conversations focused on solving its liquidity challenges. The company, which had a net loss of $57.3 million last year, said it would focus this year on its Studio IP and new artificial intelligence applications, like these.
But even the SXSW tech audience wasn’t convinced.
As one person pointed out during the Q&A after the presentation, BeReal had been having trouble getting people to come back after the novelty wore off. What would an app like Conjure do to combat the same type of retention problem?
Shouldis said the app would evolve, “and different kinds of things would happen and it wouldn’t be exactly what it is today.” He referenced the potential of integrating things like video, audio, and prototyping with Claude Code to build a community.
The premise behind the new applications is not far-fetched: AI can lead to faster software development, making it possible for companies to iterate more quickly and keep people engaged.
“In a way, software is the new content,” Peretti said.
Of course, before you can iterate, 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 it, which is not a recipe for success.
