Memo to Company Staff

Hi all,

Over the next three years, the future of digital media will be defined by two major trends: creators, and AI.

We will help shape these trends to create massive value for our audience, our employees, and our shareholders. Working together, we will:

Build the premier platform for creative people to do their most inspired work, reach the most people, and live their best lives. Content will increasingly be produced by talent around the world who work for themselves and multiple companies.

The creative process will increasingly become AI-assisted and technology-enabled. If the past 15 years of the internet have been defined by algorithmic feeds that curate and recommend content, the next 15 will be defined by AI and data helping create, personalise, and animate the content itself.

Here is how we are going to do it:

Our teams at BuzzFeed, Complex Networks, Tasty, HuffPost and BuzzFeed News will serve as the braintrust, innovating new models, creating new formats, and developing new production models to help creative people reach more people and have a bigger impact.

Our business team will serve as the monetisation experts, helping creators make the most money from their work, bringing new tech-powered products to market, and tapping into studio, commerce, and advertising opportunities.

And our tech, product, and select content teams will become the experts on the latest technologies, the best AI-models, and the most interactive formats in order to build industry-leading tools and bring creator ideas to life.

Next month we’re beginning to work with the first class of Complex Creators with over 15 new faces joining our roster of talent. Our Creator, Webscouts, and Video Acquisition teams will partner with 600+ creators this year and are growing off of a base of over ten billion views in 2022.

Research firm Statista recently reported that the global media spend in the influencer advertising segment is projected to reach $51 billion by 2027, increasing at an annual growth rate of 13.21% from 2022 to 2027.

Many creator-focused startups are struggling because they don’t have the brands and compelling offerings we are all to provide.

Our work in AI-powered creativity is off to a good start and you’ll see AI inspired content move from an R&D stage to part of our core business, enhancing the quiz experience, informing our brainstorming, and personalising our content for our audience.

We see the breakthroughs in AI opening up a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good.

In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, inspiring new ideas and inviting audience members to co-create personalised content.

That’s our plan.

Jonah Peretti

CEO – BuzzFeed

Excerpted from https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/26/23572834/buzzfeed-using-ai-tools-personalize-generate-content-openai