The A.I. Will Assist You Now
The A.I. Will Assist You Now
Is the future of journalism in danger?
Early this year, BuzzFeed was one of the first major media companies to announce that it would experiment with A.I. to produce content.
In an internal memo, BuzzFeed chief executive Jonah Peretti said,
“In 2023, you’ll see A.I. inspired content move from an R&D stage to part of our core business, enhancing the quiz experience, informing our brainstorming, and personalizing our content for our audience.”
Many shrugged. “Oh, it’s only the clickbait quizzes.” The problem is that BuzzFeed didn’t keep A.I. caged in the quiz creation room for long. Thanks to some keen-eyed reporting from Futurism, it was discovered that the company has already been using it to write some pretty bland travel guides.
Only a few months later, the move from humans to robots is in full swing.
On April 20, BuzzFeed announced it was shutting down what was left of BuzzFeed News, marking the end of its award-winning news department that once sought to upend traditional journalism by leaving heavily into social media. The company cited many reasons; tougher market conditions, changing audience habits, the failing stock market listing and the harsh truth that publishing high-quality news is an unforgiving business model. The cuts extend beyond the newsroom, with an additional 15% of staff being let go. It marks another step in BuzzFeed’s downfall; once valued at $1.7 billion, the stock has been in free fall since the company went public via a SPAC in December 2021. According to The Guardian, the business is worth less than $100 million.
BuzzFeed is not alone in its struggles; online media and journalism are going through a rough spell.
In January, Vox laid off 7% of its staff.
In April, Insider announced it was cutting 10% of its employees.
Last week, Vice announced it was letting go of 100 staff as part of a restructuring. There are now rumors the entire business is headed for bankruptcy.
While most of these layoffs and restructures are due to the tough conditions faced by media companies, several have been delivered with a more worrying undertone.
There’s something a little more sinister at work.
Layoff memos 🤝 A.I. announcements
In the memo to BuzzFeed staff, the company not only spoke of cutting staff, but it twisted the knife by confirming it was doubling down on A.I., in the same paragraph:
The changes the Business Organization is making today are focused on reducing layers in their organization, increasing speed and effectiveness of pitches, streamlining our product mix, doubling down on creators, and beginning to bring AI enhancements to every aspect of our sales process.
It also mentioned it again, saying the company “will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI, and cultural moments.” By innovation, the company seems to mean streamlining and spitting out content produced by A.I. on the cheap. Truly innovative stuff.
The same underlying message was written all over the Insider layoffs. The firings came only a week after memos encouraged employees to experiment with ChatGPT. “AI at Insider: We can use it to make us faster and better," read the subject line of an internal email to employees, screenshots of which were shared to Twitter. The email said that ChatGPT “can be our 'bicycle of the mind,” whatever that means. The Editor-In-Chief was also using it, and singing its praises, saying, “I've spent many hours working with ChatGPT, and I can already tell having access to it is going to make me a better global editor-in-chief.” Then one week later, 10% of the staff were out.
Even the CEO of Alex Springer, the company that owns Insider, has been waxing lyrical about A.I. Fittingly, he also chose to do it during a round of layoffs. In a memo to staff, he wrote, “Artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was – or simply replace it.”
Despite the Insider memo green-lighting the use of A.I., it was full of warnings on the critical caveat feeding much of the concern; the information given by ChatGPT can’t be assumed factual. The memo states, "we cannot trust generative AI as a source of truth." Yet, in the same paragraphs, it’s actively encouraging its use. We’ve already seen this play out at CNET and BankRate, where both outlets published content produced by A.I. that was found to contain falsehoods and errors. With journalism - and its reception - based on truth, on due-diligence, on non-biased reporting, throwing in a chatbot with little understanding of any of these concepts is a recipe for disaster.
The recent layoffs confirm that AI-assisted journalism is here. In other cases, it’s less assisting and more replacing. As the months tick on, more and more media companies will experiment, and more and more humans will suffer. After all, time is money, and in an industry so tight on cash, it seems they are more willing to cut out human labor in favor of robots rather than figure out how to fix the broken model of publishing high-quality journalism.
To close, I thought I’d share the thoughts of a former BuzzFeed employee who hit the nail on the head with what lies ahead.
In his article titled The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today, Charlie Warzel concluded:
“What comes next in the ChatGPT era is likely to be just as disruptive, but I doubt it’ll be as joyous and chaotic.
And I guarantee it’ll feel less human.”