BuzzFeed unveils AI content apps to generate new revenue

BuzzFeed, the U.S.-based media company known for its quizzes, listicles, and a brief Pulitzer-winning journalism division, is repositioning itself for the AI era. At least, that is the narrative.

At the SXSW conference in Austin, BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti unveiled the company's latest media venture: a spin-off named Branch Office, focused on leveraging artificial intelligence in consumer apps built for creativity and connection.

Peretti explained that the new company extends the AI experiments BuzzFeed has conducted for years. The presentation was halting, starting with slideshow glitches, followed by app demos that drew silence or polite chuckles.

“We’ve been working on this in secret for over a year, and the BuzzFeed platform has taught us a lot about what’s coming with new AI formats,” Peretti said. “Using AI is about connecting people and building community around culture, taste, and shared interests.”

Bill Shouldis, BuzzFeed’s director of product and founder of Branch Office, showcased two new apps: BF Island and Conjure.

The first app, BF Island, is a group chat platform that lets users edit and transform photos with AI. In itself, this isn't groundbreaking technology, but that's not the intended focus.

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The standout feature isn't the AI toolset itself, but an in-app library of online trends and memes curated by an editorial team. This library aims to inspire users to create AI photos referencing fleeting trends—like the McDonald’s CEO taste-testing a burger or the “frame-mogging” drama. (If those references are unfamiliar, you’re likely not the “very online” target audience.)

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Another app, Conjure, resembles BeReal—a once-daily ephemeral photo app—but guides users to capture daily photos of subjects other than themselves. (As a reminder, BeReal failed to maintain traction and was eventually acquired by Voodoo.) In the demo, a prompt like “What lies between the trees and the moon?” led users to photograph the night sky. A series of eerie images flashed on screen, followed by a whisper: “What will you conjure?”

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We didn’t grasp the concept, and the audience clearly didn’t either. After the demo, a solitary cough broke the silence, followed by uneasy laughter.

Shouldis then noted that Conjure also incorporates AI, with the app featuring “an AI spirit for a CEO.” (Again, what does that mean?)

Peretti also introduced Quiz Party, a social app that enables users to take BuzzFeed quizzes with friends and share results.

BuzzFeed’s lackluster presentation came just days after the media company disclosed “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern and revealed it was in strategic discussions to address liquidity issues. The company, which posted a net loss of $57.3 million last year, stated it would concentrate this year on its Studio IP and new AI apps, such as those unveiled.

Yet even the tech-savvy audience at SXSW remained unconvinced.

As one audience member noted during the Q&A session, BeReal struggled to retain users once the novelty faded. What would an app like Conjure do to address a similar retention challenge?

Shouldis responded that the app would evolve, “and have different types of things happening and not just be exactly what it is today.” He mentioned the potential to integrate video, audio, and prototyping with Claude Code to foster community.

The underlying premise of these new apps is not unreasonable: AI enables faster software development, allowing companies to iterate more quickly and maintain user engagement.

“In a way, software is the new content,” Peretti noted.

Of course, before iteration comes user acquisition. With these new apps, BuzzFeed appears to have focused more on what AI can accomplish than on what users actually want to do with it—an approach that is not a recipe for success.