ChatGPT is about to write news for today's headlines in the United States, and the company's stock price has skyrocketed 120%

Using artificial intelligence to create news, New York-based digital media giant BuzzFeed has once again succeeded in capturing the spark of traversing uncertain cycles.

In recent weeks, when Amazon and Google made tech headlines for layoffs, the U.S. media industry took a similar hit.

According to reports, CNN, NBC, The Washington Post, Gannett, the largest newspaper group in the United States, Vimeo, the technology media protocol and Vice have all begun layoff plans in early 2023, and BuzzFeed has also become a member.

Similar to other U.S. media outlets, BuzzFeed laid off 12 percent of its workforce months ago, citing deteriorating economic conditions.

But unlike other companies, the digital media giant, known for its unorthodox personality, quickly found creative solutions to boost its share price.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed announced plans to use OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, for content creation for its website by using OpenAI's open application programming interface (API). ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that has previously taken the web by storm, and the Wall Street Journal first reported that BuzzFeed plans to use OpenAI's ChatGPT tool as part of content creation.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an internal memo that in 2023, AI-led content creation will shift from the R&D phase to part of the company's core business. "Our industry will go beyond AI-driven curation (feeding) to AI-driven creation (content)."

When asked if BuzzFeed plans to use AI for news reporting, Jonah Peretti said it would consider doing so.

The news quickly sparked investor enthusiasm, with BuzzFeed jumping nearly 120% on Thursday to close at $2.09, with a market capitalization of nearly $300 million, its biggest gain since going public in December 2021 through a merger with a SPAC (Blank Check Company), in which more than 190 million shares changed hands.

As of the close of U.S. stocks on January 27, BuzzFeed shares rose another 85.17% to $3.87. In the past 5 trading days, the company's share price has risen by a total of 309.52%.

Investors are excited not only by BuzzFeed's partnership with DreamWorks OpenAI, but also by its partnership with Meta. The New York Times reported Wednesday that BuzzFeed has struck a multi-year, roughly $10 million deal with Meta that will bring more content to Facebook and Instagram.

According to Peretti's memo, BuzzFeed's various creator-driven businesses have generated "tens of millions of dollars" in revenue with an audience of "well over 200 million people," for example, on Instagram, where creators and audience collaborations for food section Tasty generated more than 1 billion views in 2022. According to Peretti, more than 20% of BuzzFeed.com audiences are "consuming content created by creators."

It's unclear how BuzzFeed's use of OpenAI will be linked to Meta's multimillion-dollar transactions.

Founded in 2005, BuzzFeed, a viral news aggregator that relies heavily on a team of hundreds of human editors and places great emphasis on machine learning and data analytics, has led to a series of curious news and meme graphs a few years later.

Since 2017, news aggregation media represented by BuzzFeed and Toutiao have begun to have a profound impact on news production and media ecology.

In December 2021, BuzzFeed went public as the first digital media stock in the United States, which also achieved the high point of the US digital media industry. After its listing, BuzzFeed quickly entered a downturn stage, relying heavily on native advertising, making it difficult to move under the uncertainty of the epidemic.

With Vox's acquisition of New York Media, Group Nine's acquisition of PopSugar, and Vice Acquisition's acquisition of Refinery 29, the U.S. digital media industry has moved from a horse race to a huddle stage. Two years ago, Peretti sounded the alarm that digital media companies needed to band together and scale to compete with big tech companies.

Today, BuzzFeed is back where the dream began, solving its problems with the path it does best.

Generally speaking, under the value framework of media content + distribution channels, the successful application of AI is also the key to the success of BuzzFeed and Toutiao.

Li Lei, former director of ByteDance AI Lab, mentioned in 2017 that the successful application of artificial intelligence in the C end needs to meet three conditions: high frequency of use, low cost of use, AI application-assisted decision-making itself is relatively light and low risk, today's headlines can subvert the traditional information distribution industry through AI technology, precisely because it meets these three characteristics, the last of which is the most important.

After the birth of ChatGPT, Dai Yusen, managing partner of ZhenFund, also has a similar view, Dai Yusen believes that new technologies often have to do those places that do not require high accuracy, ChatGPT belongs to the field where creativity is more important than accuracy, this characteristic leads to the existing Copilot, Jasper.AI generative AI without multiple rounds of dialogue, can obtain good commercial income.

In his memo, BuzzFeed CEO Peretti predicted that creative work would become an AI-assisted and technology-driven process. "If the internet for the past 15 years has been defined by algorithms that help curate and recommend content, the next 15 years will be defined by artificial intelligence and data that will help create personalized content itself."

But journalists around the world don't have to immediately worry about robots grabbing their jobs, and even Peretti believes that despite BuzzFeed's introduction of OpenAI, editorial staff will still dominate: "In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, spark new ideas, and invite audience members to co-create personalized content." So says the CEO.

After all, it is only a matter of time before artificial intelligence enters the world of journalism and education, and it is better to reject change than to embrace it.

Reporter | Lee Kyung-ah