All posts tagged: BuzzFeed

New Business Insider CEO focused on monetising off-platform audience

New Business Insider CEO focused on monetising off-platform audience

Published by Sam Flores

Business Insider CEO Christian Baesler. Picture: Axel Springer Business Insider is set to begin monetising its non-website audience, which new CEO Christian Baesler said has not been done “in any meaningful way so far”. Baesler, who has been leading Business Insider on an interim basis since June and has now been appointed permanently, said the brand is entering its “next phase”, which is also centred on the “need to become essential for a number of professional niches”. He is bringing social media expertise from five years as president and CEO of former Hot Ones producer Complex and then just over a year as chief operating officer at Buzzfeed after its 2022 takeover. Visits to the Business Insider website in the US more than halved in the past two years to 30.9 million in June. Ten people were laid off in May at Axel Springer-owned Business Insider, its fourth round of layoffs in four years, as the newsroom scaled back in some coverage areas and refocused on others. Baesler told Press Gazette: “Historically, Business Insider has …

Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious

Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious

Published by skeptic

Author and illustrator Loryn Brantz never imagined that a popular cartoon character she created almost a decade ago would one day be the subject of an intellectual property dispute involving BuzzFeed, Amazon’s video streaming service, and generative artificial intelligence. But that’s exactly the situation she finds herself in today. “Nothing said in good faith by managers and executives was followed through with,” Brantz says of BuzzFeed, her former employer. This week, Brantz shared an Instagram post calling out the once-dominant media brand. She was responding to news that the company had licensed her advice-giving cupcake character, Cuppy, to Prime Video, which plans to release a series called Cupcake & Friends, developed with AI tools. It’s one of three new animated shows greenlit through the GenAI Creators’ Fund, a joint initiative of Amazon Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios. “This is an assault on artists everywhere,” Brantz declared in her post. The headlines announcing the project were a nightmare come true—and a scenario that everyone who works in a creative field has begun to dread in …

Good Advice Cupcake Creator Slams BuzzFeed for Teaming With Amazon on AI Show

Good Advice Cupcake Creator Slams BuzzFeed for Teaming With Amazon on AI Show

Published by Daniella Wilson

The creator of Cuppy, the star of the web series The Good Advice Cupcake, is calling out BuzzFeed for partnering with Amazon for an AI-created animated series about the character. Loryn Brantz took to her Instagram, saying she’s “horrified and disgusted by BuzzFeed taking my character, The Good Advice Cupcake, and giving it to an AI platform.” Brantz initially developed Cuppy as a comic during her time at BuzzFeed before it was adapted into an animated web series by animator and voice actor Kyra Kupetsky. “My time at BuzzFeed was marked by continually being taken advantage of and lied to,” she continued. “They repeatedly assured me in good faith that they would never do anything with Cuppy without my input, yet offered me no legal options, insisting that I would never need them. The news that this character, who is based on my own personality and whom I created as a microphone to spread love and positivity, has been taken and turned into a soulless AI puppet feels like having my intestines pulled out of …

Entertainment mogul Byron Allen to acquire BuzzFeed, HuffPost

Entertainment mogul Byron Allen to acquire BuzzFeed, HuffPost

Published by Sam Flores

Digital entertainment company BuzzFeed Inc. is selling its majority stake to Los Angeles entertainment mogul Byron Allen for $120 million. BuzzFeed announced the sale late Monday, saying Allen Family Digital had agreed to pay $3 apiece for 40 million shares, representing a 52% stake in the company. Allen will pay $20 million in cash up front, with the remaining $100 million due in five years. As part of the deal, Allen also will take over HuffPost, another internet pioneer, owned by BuzzFeed. The sale is expected to close later this month. BuzzFeed founder and current chief Jonah Peretti will transition to a new role as president of BuzzFeed AI. Allen will become chairman and chief executive. “This investment in our business and Byron’s management roles will provide liquidity and operational focus to BuzzFeed,” Peretti said in a statement. Once an internet darling valued at $1.5 billion, the 20-year-old site appealed to consumers with its lists, splashy news articles and quizzes, including “Which ‘Schitt’s Creek’ character are you?” BuzzFeed has been on the ropes, financially, for …

BuzzFeed Nearing Bankruptcy After Disastrous Turn Toward AI

BuzzFeed Nearing Bankruptcy After Disastrous Turn Toward AI

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In January 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced in a memo to staff that the company was making a hard pivot to AI — years before the word “slop” was added to the public lexicon. In the memo, which was published roughly two months after OpenAI unveiled its groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot, Peretti said BuzzFeed would be using the software to enhance the company’s infamous quizzes by generating personalized responses. The company’s stock price jumped aggressively, from around $3 per share to north of $15. But longer-term, neither insiders nor the public were particularly compelled by the move. Nonetheless, Peretti doubled down, promising in May 2023 that AI will “replace the majority of static content” on the site, just a month after shuttting down its Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News division. Reality soon set in. The AI quizzes were underwhelming, and the site was soon caught publishing entire AI-generated articles that were sloppy and repetitive. After the initial spike in …