BuzzFeed Stock Surges Over 120% After Company Announces Plans to Use ChatGPT
BuzzFeed (BZFD) plans to rely heavily on AI-generated content.
News that sent the company’s shares skyrocketing, rising as much as 150% in afternoon trading.
According to an internal memo obtained by Yahoo Finance and first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the company plans to use OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, to generate and personalize some of its content and improve its quizzes.
“To deliver on our mission promise, we need to build a stronger business foundation by executing a forward-looking strategy,” BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote to employees.
“We need to look to the future and steer our business towards longer-term trends in order to seize the opportunities that will arise in the eventual recovery,” Peretti continued, citing “creators” like celebrities, athletes and influencers, as well as artificial intelligence, as the future of digital media over the next three years.
In response to that effort, the Journal reported this week that Facebook’s parent company Meta (META) plans to pay BuzzFeed millions of dollars to bring more creators to the social media giant’s platforms.
BuzzFeed shares have fallen around 75% since the company went public via a SPAC suit in late 2021.
BuzzFeed’s Peretti told employees that “the creative process will become increasingly AI-assisted and technology-enabled.”
“If the last 15 years of the internet have been defined by algorithmic feeds that organize and recommend content, the next 15 years will be defined by AI and data helping to create, personalize and animate the content itself,” Peretti said.
“Our industry will expand beyond AI-powered curation (flow) to AI-powered creation (content). Creative humans like us will play a key role in providing the ideas, the cultural currency , inspired prompts, intellectual property and formats that come to life using the latest technology.”
ChatGPT, the AI-based language processing bot, has caused a frenzy of conversations over the past few weeks with artist will.i.am describing tech innovation as “a great co-pilot for creatives” in a conversation with Yahoo Finance in Davos.
Meanwhile, tech giants like Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) have taken differing views, with the former apparently concerned about release, while the latter is making a multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment in OpenAI. , the company confirmed. earlier this week.
Microsoft, which said in its latest earnings report that it wants to “innovate for the future in the new era of AI,” invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019. But the latest investment comes as the tech giant is facing a series of layoffs that have hit its businesses ranging from cloud services to games.
In a statement, OpenAI said Microsoft’s investment will enable it to develop and research increasingly “safe, useful and powerful” AI.
With additional reporting by Daniel Howley.
Alexandra is a senior entertainment and media reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alliecanal8193 and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com
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