BuzzFeed, the US-based media company best known for its quizzes, articles, and at one time its Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism department, is reinventing itself for the AI era. At least, that’s the pitch.
At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti introduced the company’s next foray into media, a spinoff called Branch Office, which he said will explore artificial intelligence in consumer apps designed for creativity and connection.
The new company is an extension of years of experiments BuzzFeed has conducted with AI technology, Peretti explained in a halting presentation that began with a glitch in a slideshow and then moved to a demo of the app with silence and polite applause.
“We’ve been working on this in secret for over a year, and we’ve learned a lot from the BuzzFeed platform about what happens with new kinds of AI formats,” Peretti said. “Using AI is a way to bring people together and build communities around these pillars of culture, taste, and community.”
Bill Shouldis, Product Director at BuzzFeed and Founder of Branch Office, introduced the company’s two new apps: BF Island and Conjure.
The first product, BF Island, is a group chat platform that offers AI-powered photo modification and editing features. This in and of itself isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but that’s not the point.
The key feature here is not an AI toolset, but an in-app library of online trends and memes created by our editorial team. This could inspire users to create AI photos that reference blink-and-you-miss-it trends, like the McDonald’s CEO tasting a burger or the “frame mogging” drama. (If you don’t know what these are, you’re probably not the “very online” audience being targeted.)
Another app, Conjure, is similar to BeReal, a once-a-day ephemeral photo app, but instead appears to encourage users to take a daily photo of something other than themselves. (Just to be clear, BeReal didn’t catch on and eventually lost steam and was abandoned by Voodoo.) For example, in the demo, the photo prompt was “What’s between the tree and the moon?”, leading users to take a photo of the night sky. A series of eerie images flashed on the screen, followed by a whisper: “What do you remind me of?”
We didn’t get it, and clearly the audience didn’t either. After the demonstration, the sound of a person coughing could be heard in the silence, followed by audible laughter.
Shodis then pointed out that Conjure also involves AI, as the app has a “CEO AI mentality.” (What again?)
Peretti also introduced Quiz Party, a social app that lets you take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share your results.
BuzzFeed’s sweeping presentation comes just days after the media company shared that it had “significant doubts” about its ability to continue operating and was in strategic conversations focused on resolving liquidity challenges. The company, which had a net loss of $57.3 million last year, said it will focus on Studio IP and new AI apps this year.
But even the technology-minded audience at SXSW wasn’t convinced.
As one person pointed out during the post-presentation Q&A session, BeReal had a hard time bringing people back once the novelty wore off. What would apps like Conjure do to address similar retention issues?
Shodis said the app “will evolve so that it’s not exactly the same as it is today, and different kinds of things happen.” He mentioned the potential to integrate video, audio, prototyping, etc. with Claude Code to build a community.
The premise behind the new app isn’t unreasonable. AI accelerates software development, allowing companies to iterate faster and keep people engaged.
“In a sense, software is new content,” Peretti said.
Of course, before iterating, you need to attract users. With its new app, BuzzFeed seems to have thought more about what AI can do than what people want to do with it, but that’s not the recipe for success.
