First it was CNET, now it’s Buzzfeed. All the mediocre outlets are getting in on the action, presumably to avoid (over)paying their Gender and Women’s Studies graduates on staff.
This is actually probably a net positive. The machines can’t churn out much worse than what the intersectional BuzzFeed staff does already.
BuzzFeed Inc. said it would rely on ChatGPT creator OpenAI to enhance its quizzes and personalize some content for its audiences, becoming the latest digital publisher to embrace artificial intelligence.
In a memo to staff sent Thursday morning, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Jonah Peretti said he intends for AI to play a larger role in the company’s editorial and business operations this year.
Mr. Peretti expects AI to assist the creative process and enhance the company’s content, while humans play the role of providing ideas, “cultural currency,” and “inspired prompts,” he wrote in his memo. In 15 years, he wrote, he expects AI and data to help “create, personalize, and animate the content itself,” rather than just curate existing content.
The AI article generation trend has important implications for the future of journalism at large, but none of this really matters in the specific context of BuzzFeed. The people who produce content for BuzzFeed already operate on hivemind groupthink. They already pump out the most inane, uncreative, redundant drivel humanly possible. They’re already cold and dead on the inside. They might as well be robots.
Related: This Week in Techno-Hell: AI Might Soon Be Writing the News You Consume
Now AI, instead of a liberal arts major, will be henpecking readers about what costumes they’re not allowed to wear for Halloween this year. This is totally doable: [popular costume] + [“cultural appropriation” word sald] = [white supremacy, transphobia, ableism, etc.]. It’s not a super complicated formula to outsource to a computer. Once the AI learns how to do it, it’ll be a forever skill like riding a bike. If machines can play elite chess, they can most definitely master the craft of a BuzzFeed lifestyle thinkpiece.