BuzzFeed shares soared on Thursday after CEO Jonah Peretti said the company would embrace the application programming interface from OpenAI — the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E — to personalize content like quizzes for users.
Shares of BZFD closed at $2.09 on Thursday, with after-hours trading pushing the stock price up higher. The stock previously closed at $0.95 on Wednesday.
In a message to staff, Peretti said the “AI inspired content” would move from the research and development stage to becoming a “part of our core business” beginning next month.
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“To be clear, 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,” he wrote. “In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, inspiring new ideas and inviting audience members to co-create personalized content. When you see this work in action it is pretty amazing.”
During an all-hands meeting with staff, Peretti shared a preview of what the AI-powered quizzes would look like, with an example crafting a romantic comedy storyline for a user based on their responses to prompts and timed to Valentine’s Day.
BuzzFeed will not be using OpenAI’s API to write news articles, a company spokesperson clarified to The Hollywood Reporter.
Thursday’s stock performance also follows a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, struck a deal with BuzzFeed valued close to $10 million that will involve BuzzFeed making creator content for Meta’s platforms.
