GoKawiilSign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you!
BuzzFeed made an unfortunate announcement during its company’s earnings report last week, admitting that “there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” and that it was “actively exploring strategic options” to address its “liquidity challenges.”
The company remains neck-deep in debt, reporting a net loss of $57.3 million for 2025 — and, by most indications, it has yet to successfully reinvent itself to stop hemorrhaging money.
The report came roughly three years after BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti first announced that the company was doubling down on AI, news that was met with a mix of reactions, ranging from skepticism to outright disgust.
Then, during this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, the company made good on Peretti’s threat to bring a slew of “AI apps” to market, the culmination of years of chasing uninspired AI slop and gutting its Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News division.
BuzzFeed execs showed off demos for two products under the umbrella of its new consumer-facing spin-off, called Branch Office: BF Island and Conjure, a group chat built around an AI image editor and a head-scratching BeReal clone, respectively.
As TechCrunch reports, the demos for the two apps landed with a wet thud — which isn’t exactly surprising given the impossible-to-ignore public AI backlash that continues to grow. After the company explained how Conjure challenges users to take smartphone photos based on riddle-like daily prompts, like nondescript pictures of the sky, audience members were clearly nonplussed.
“We don’t get it, and clearly the audience didn’t either,” TechCrunch‘s Sarah Perez wrote. “After the demo, a lone cough could be heard among the silence, followed by uncomfortable laughter.”
A quick perusal of an official description of the upcoming apps doesn’t shed much more light on what one would get out of joining either Conjure or BF Island.
“Every day, Conjure sends you a summons: a subject to go photograph,” the company wrote. “You submit your photo as an offering. Something on the other end accepts it. Or it doesn’t. No explanation.”
... continue reading